Affiliate marketers come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is certain: If you’re a blogger, you’ve got some great advantages over none-blogging affiliate marketers. A blog is an incredible marketing tool, which you can leverage, even if you’ve never used it as a marketing tool, before.

It’s not just your standard sales page Most affiliate marketers are just in it for the money. They whip up a butt-ugly template sales page, copy-past the standard sales copy and sit there and wait for the messiah. Well guess what? He ain’t coming and neither is the mule he never rode in on!

A blog is an excellent way to avoid this situation, for a few reasons: First of all, blogs have many pages. You don’t have to settle with just one article. You can write many articles glorifying your new found supper product. Secondly, they usually look better than you typical sales page. Third, you can link to your own articles from within your blog, getting your blog visitors to the article and raising your page rank, simultaneously! Fourth, you won’t get banned from social networking sites, because you posted a sales page. And hey! If you provide value in your article, people may actually thank you!

Trust
A blogger who starts to promote a product has an advantage over a complete internet newbie: He’s already established a web- presence and brand, and already accumulated a following of religiously adoring readers (hopefully). These readers can make for a fertile customer base, as they already trust you and are influenced by your opinion. This doesn’t mean you don’t have to market your product or service of choice, but it does mean you already have a ready and willing audience. And that’s an amazing advantage.

Relevance
Don’t think that just because you have your adoring fans and you made a fabulous marketing pitch, you could sell anything to anyone. Understanding the relevance of your product to your readers is invaluable! Imagine if Britney Spears went on her blog and started promoting her favorite SEO e-book. I doubt she’ll make sales. (Or maybe a new trend of SEM manic teenyboppers will emerge…)

If you’re blogging about blogging and internet marketing, there are a lot of affiliate programs available. If you’re blogging about cabbage cakes, however, your readers probably don’t know anything about blogs and SEO. Just because it’s of interest to you, as a blogger, doesn’t mean your readers will be interested, too. In this case, I’d advise you to check out something in your niche. You could probably find great cabbage cake recipe books, on Amazon.com. You can post a review and ad the Amazon affiliate link, with the pretty picture and everything. (So much more effective than just adding an amazon widget to your sidebar, by the way.)

A Word Of Warning
Do not- I repeat- DO NOT open up a blog, just to market affiliate products! Unless you’re a content maven, who writes up the most amazing review articles, that could make me laugh, cry, and generally loose my mind gushing over how wonderful you are, just don’t. It doesn’t sell, it’s even worst than the traditional long-copy sales-letter page, as people will feel like you tried to dupe them into buying by disguising a blog as a sales page. Another note of warning to Blogger bloggers: If
someone flags you (the second button, from the left, at the top of any Blogger blog- that’s how easy it is!), your blog will be shut down, if enough flags are clicked. If you spam - you deserve it.

That said, I wish all the bloggers out there, trying to make a buck, good luck and happy (and smart) affiliating!

About the Author
Tali Shapiro is a freelance artist and writer, who learned the need for internet marketing, through a lot of bad personal experience. Now, after a few years of self-online-education and self-offline- discipline, she can pass on her wily experiences and worldly teachings through the wonderful medium of blog. Catch up with Tali’s marketing exploits on The Marketer Review.