What is new for affiliates in 2008?

Written by Greg Powell | Saturday, 15 December 2007

As affiliates online, we are susceptible to the fast paced changing environment that we work in. Good affiliates follow new trends, and leverage technology and advances on the internet to their benefits. 2007 has seen large increases in the way webmaster’s are gaining and rapidly mastering the following:

Social Bookmarking – Social bookmarking is a way for users to share and store their bookmarked and favorite web pages. Many of these sites have become very large, in terms of both page rank and authority. Never before have so many webmasters been utilizing social bookmarking sites to promote their own sites or products. When another web user sees a site that many people claim is good, it is human nature to check it out. For webmasters, social bookmarking is all about viral marketing. With so many different options though, it’s hard to know where to start. Here are a few of my favorites.
- StumbleUpon : Hands down, StumbleUpon drives the most easy and consistent traffic to nearly any niche you are in. It is particularly powerful for launching new sites – from gambling to real estate, there is truly a market for everyone. There are tons of people gaming SU everyday, trading stumbles and buying them. The fact that this is becoming increasingly rampant probably indicates it’s working. While that is true, however, it requires a lot of grunt work you may not have time for. That being said, my favorite trick on StumbleUpon is to create something good and entertaining or interesting and then buy the traffic directly from StumbleUpon itself. The traffic is relatively cheap with very, very detailed targeting options and I find if you had good content in the first place, the stumbles just snowball and you see much, much more traffic than you paid for.
- Del.icio.us : Del.icio.us is a popular social bookmarking service owned by Yahoo! and can drive a significant amount of targeted traffic.
- Digg.com : Of course, Digg is the big one and hitting the coveted homepage is a common cause for servers being down.
- Propeller.com : This is the old Netscape, a smart re-brand in my opinion.
- Technorati.com : Technorati is huge, and a very popular social bookmarking site.
- Reddit.com : Digg like site that can drive very decent traffic.
Video + Podcasts – With every passing day, more and more of the world’s population are upgrading their computers to be able to handle video. Podcasts are becoming hugely popular and mainstream. To see a site with very professional podcasts, check out WebmasterRadio - As an affiliate you’ll probably want to stick around and listen to a few shows too. I could go on and on about the great shows on this network, but considering SEO Rockstars will be back later this September I promise you that alone is reason enough to tune in.
Mashups – Creating a mashup is a great way to get a site to go viral fast. A mashup generally “mashes” a bunch of information together using various sources like API and RSS feeds. Generally speaking, any affiliate can make a mashup in any niche although skeptics claim that only those sites using private interfaces and applications are true “mashups”.
Social Networking – Social Networking, which is different than social bookmarking, is the one of the newest ways to promote your affiliate sites. With no sugar coating, there are affiliates making 7 figures riding on social network’s backs. This level may be hard to attain, but it gives you an idea of how beneficial these sites can be for your brand. If you want an updated list of social networking sites and their user base, check it here.
More Outsourcing Options – The “I can’t work with anyone overseas b/c they don’t understand me” is a cliché and definitely erroneous in today’s global workforce. The best super affiliates always outsource more work then they can handle and the options are really endless. Without even going into the markets at various webmaster and niche forums, you can generally find any help you need from grunt work SEO to Fully Ran Websites or Networks and anything in between.