A registered domain name would give you an address in the virtual world. A web hosting service would give you a lot. It’s now time to build your house.

But there are many kinds of houses, with each type serving a particular need. In the same light, there are many kinds of websites, and each type would also serve a particular need. Our goal right now is to determine the kinds of websites you could create to best serve you affiliate marketing concerns.

As an affiliate, there are a number of website models you could decide to employ. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

A Review Center

You could create a website, preferably using blogging software like that offered by www.blogger.com or www.wordpress.com, then seek to review the products that are released in the market. Here’s the deal, though. Review the products you are promoting. Naturally, you’d want your reviews to be favorable for the affiliate merchant’s offerings. So stress the beneficial points of the products so that your visitors may be encouraged to click on your affiliate link and be redirected to the affiliate merchant’s sales page.

An Affiliate Mall

An effective way of promoting your affiliate links is through an affiliate mall. You could make your website into an online catalogue of sorts. Display the products you are promoting, and attach your affiliate links. Provide a short but encouraging description for each product. Also include a small image of the product itself (as an affiliate, you are allowed to use the affiliate program’s images for your promotional campaigns, so you won’t be violating any copyrights by doing this).

This setup is quite empowering for your visitors. They are given the option to choose which among the products you are pre-selling would be most advantageous for them.

A Content Site

Content is king on the internet. People surf the internet in search of information. If you have the information they need, then you’re in business. You could focus on unique and quality information for your website, and include your affiliate links by way of recommendation or direct announcement.

There are many kinds of content sites which you could decide to build:

• a news site which offers the latest information on the market you will be catering to;

• an information hub containing guides and general information about the same market;

• a download center for valuable products you’re freely offering (this is great for a viral marketing campaign, which we will discuss in subsequent lessons)

An Opt-In Page

You will not be able to win all of them. You won’t even be able to win a majority of them. The best thing you could aim for is to gather the “yes” visitors, try your best to change the mind of the “no” visitors, and capture the contact information of the “maybe” visitors so that you could continue to convince them for a future sale. And this you could do with a mailing list.

By having them subscribe to your mailing list, you’d be able to contact them, with new offers, or perhaps with some valuable tidbits that would warm them up to purchase the affiliate product you are selling. All you need is an account with an excellent autoresponder service, which you could integrate in such a page so that it will capture prospective leads on auto-pilot.

You could employ this strategy on any of the website models we have mentioned above, or you could make a web page specifically designed to capture the above mentioned contact details.

Ready to get started in affiliate marketing? Super affiliate Rosalind Gardner can show you how with her Super Affiliate Handbook.