Is it essential for an affiliate to own a website?

As an affiliate is it absolutely essential to own your own website? Does making a site greatly increase your income or chance of a higher income?

And if so what are good themes for websites that an affiliate would make to best promote vendors.

 

Whats up with you guys and being so secretive?

 

If you want you can post articles on web 2.0 properties and include links to affiliate products. No domains, no hosting, really no costs. Many people make sales this way.

 

It is essential at launch, when you are doing good sales then it should be added.

If the product is hot then of course it will boost your income.

 

Hey Rykage,

Owning a built out domain is definitely not essential to making money with affiliate marketing. Yes, it could keep your display costs down but there are other ways of promoting and sometimes your own website isn't the best target. I also work with many affiliates that do not run display at all - no banners, text, etc. and they still generate very significant revenue. If you don't have your own website I'd try media buys or CPM bids on other sites' ad units who have users within your target market, PPV is worth a shot if you're just starting out, or haven't carved out a niche yet. If you have experience with ppc or seo try optimizing a free blog page on squidoo (or some other similar service) with lots of good info and links to the offer page.

You can also buy email lists, but for targeted lists that can get expensive.

Hope that helps,
Ty

 

I make most of my cash on twitter.

So no, its not essential, but its still always good to have a blog or a website to fall back on.

 

Social media, PPC campaigns are some of the ways you can earn money through Affiliate programs

 

Its not essential but websites are not expensive so maybe you would want to get one anyway to see whether it increases your revenue for the particular products you promote

 

bridge pages are great too

 

While you don't need your own website, in many cases I'd highly recommend one. Having your own landing pages gives you a lot more control and allows you to test and optimize things better. Having direct access to the server stats gives you a much greater insight into user behavior as well.

For anything SEO based you obviously want to own and control your site as essentially you are developing an asset. For paid search you own site is extremely important as well, as direct linking tends to get much lower quality scores, only one instance of a landing page will appear on searches in the case others are also promoting it, and in many niches Google tends to frown upon direct linking

 

On most of the Networks it is essential.

 

Free landing pages for affiliate marketing - sharedaffiliatemarketing.com - post your articles and banners for free.

 

I think having your own site and pages gives you a distinct advantage. Of course if you do social marketing then you can get away without actually having an infrastructure behind you but using your facebook profile/fan page or twitter page is still really a 'website', its just hosted within a larger network.