Online Affiliate Marketing Tools for Traffic Generation

There generally 2 reasons why you want to generate many visitors to your affiliate network program. These are:

1. To increase the chance of people buying your products or services – Jim Rohn, a famous philosopher says: "If you do something often enough, a ratio will appear". If you are familiar with the law of averages, this means that you are aiming to increase your sales rate. If, for example, one out of ten people buys your products, imagine if those goods are exposed to a thousand visitors. That is a sure way to make passive income.

2. To be listed on the first SERP – When the major search engines notice your popularity online, they will reward you by placing your website towards the first SERP (search engine results page). This, in turn, will give more exposure to your online affiliate marketing links. You initially take the effort of building credibility to online visitors by using the tools listed below until you reach the first SERP. Then, everything else after that becomes easier.

I recommend having your own website for your online affiliate marketing. It gives an impression of credibility and professionalism. This is how to create passive income long term.

Now, take this opportunity to learn affiliate marketing tools and procedures that you can use in creating traffic to your affiliate website:

2. Blogs – Blogs like wordpress and blogspot are simple websites where you can talk about almost anything in plain language. Blogs are hot and a lot of online entrepreneurs are using this as their major traffic generating tool. Just put your affiliate link on it. You also have the option of monetizing your blogs.

3. Article marketing – Articles are comparable with blogs but it has a more professional touch. It has been used for decades and most of the articles that people had created are still there today. Your affiliate links to your website will be located in the article resource box. Some of the famous free article submission sites are Ezinearticles and Goarticles.

4. Lenses – If you are familiar with Squidoo, they have a unique way of helping you create special websites called "lenses". You have the convenience of creating online content with ease, because most of the commands you will find in squidoo, are interactive with a wysiwyg interface (what you see is what you get). You also have the ability to monetize your lenses and send money to charities.

5. Forums – Share something in free public forums that is relevant to your affiliate niche, or answer some inquiries. They might find you as an expert and visit your site through the affiliate link you provided.

6. Blog commenting – It is usual that you are allowed to put your website when you want to leave a comment in blogs. Remember to write something impressive so that others will notice your comment and eventually visit your affiliate programs.

7. Yahoo Answers! – Participate in Yahoo where you can start asking questions that others might answer. Or, you can answer existing questions. A question answered well attracts people to click your link and visit your website to get more information.

8. Bookmarking – Bookmarking sites such as Digg and Delicious are free online services where you can save website links for future use. Since you have your own website, it is advisable to bookmark its pages because other people will also be able to see and visit them on bookmarking sites.

9. Micro blogging – Micro blogging is similar to blogs but you can only put a limited amount of text, usually less than 200 characters. Familiar free micro blogging websites are Twitter, Friendfeed, and Plurk. Micro blogging is a powerful preselling tool because people can see your status from time to time. It serves something like a quickly updated online diary. You can include a website link with your messages or profile.

10. Social networking sites – These are very popular online marketing tool because you can build your leads from social sites. You can invite individuals and befriend them. Through your status post, people will get to know you better. You can even play poker with them while you do online affiliate marketing. Facebook, Myspace, Multiply and friendster are some of such sites. They are all free!

11. Word of mouth – This is the old way of promoting your business, but should never be under estimated. Remember that though you are doing offline affiliate marketing, most of the people you talk to will spend time chatting, browsing and "facebooking" on the internet. They can easily spread your affiliate business the moment they go online.

There are more tools out there that you can use, but these are the most common. They are enough to create channels, for visitors to flow to your website and create passive income online. Do this consistently during your first year in business, and you will be successful in your online affiliate marketing.