Free Advertising for Affiliate Marketers

Although website ads and pay per click advertising can bring good results, it is a good idea to do as much advertising as possible with free and low cost methods, especially when you are starting out.

One of the most effective methods of advertising affiliate products is through article marketing.

This method involves writing articles and submitting them to article directories online. Ezine Articles is hands-down the most popular place for affiliate marketers to submit their articles, and for good reason. Articles posted to Ezine Articles seem to have an easier time getting ranked with Google. This brings traffic to your article, which may lead to clicks on your resource box links.

Another way to get traffic is to post helpful messages in forums and put your affiliate link or website URL in the signature file.

Always check the forum rules before doing this, because some of them don't allow affiliate links. Be careful not to spam the forum; that will just get your account deleted. Read the posts and make useful suggestions and comments when appropriate.

Get an RSS feed reader if you don't have one and make a point of subscribing to the feeds for several popular blogs that are in the same niche that you are trying to sell products in.

Read the posts on these blogs and try to leave insightful comments. Most blogs will allow you to link to your website when you leave a comment. Make sure your comments are relevant to the post you are commenting on, and avoid generic comments. If you leave a comment that just says "Great post," the owner of the site will probably not approve the comment and you will have wasted your time. Say something useful and your comments will usually be approved.

There are many free classified ad sites where you can advertise things you are selling. However, some of them do not allow affiliate links. Read the terms before posting to make sure you are not breaking any rules.

Social bookmarking is another way to promote your affiliate products online.

You can bookmark the articles you have posted while doing article marketing at websites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious. These are shared bookmarks that can be searched by others who use the bookmarking site. Other social media can be used to drive traffic to your articles as well. For example, you can tweet a link to each article on Twitter as soon as it is posted.

You can use these tips to drive traffic to your articles and websites without paying a cent for advertising. Once you are making a sizable income from your affiliate marketing, you may want to step up to paid advertising methods, but there is never a guarantee that a paid ad campaign will make any money, and there are enough free promotional methods available that you don't need to throw money away on ads when you are just starting out.