One of the keys to success in affiliate marketing is contextual relevance. Sure, there is no fixed cost associating with running your program through the thousands of coupon and deal related sites that exist to make a quick buck. Unfortunately, the time spent managing an extensive set of publishers and keeping an eye out for the ever present fraud, sucks the value out of the few leads or sales you might generate from a site that doesn’t reach your target audience.
Finding unique ways to reach your consumer pays off in dividends. Why not through blog plugins?
Mind you, I’m not talking about creating affiliate widgets or plugins to promote your business through blogs, I’m talking about reaching the blogger, a unique audience, through the plugin application. In a win for plugin developers, you can help them monetize their work without their needing to turn to the email spam or lead gen models that many use today. Offer a valuable product or service to the audience that consumes the plugin, and the developer has an unobtrusive, mutually valuable, revenue stream.
Consider the promotion of Omniture through Alex King’s Popularity Contest, MailChimp to bloggers who use Takayuki Miyoshi’s Contact Form 7, or SEO books and services from within Semper Fi’s fantastic All in One SEO Plugin. Don’t misunderstanding me, I don’t mean to suggest that those plugins are doing this, and I hope they don’t look to me unfavorably for suggesting the possibility, my point is those plugins reach bloggers with clear intent and interest in the products or services that could be promoted through the Admin pages of the WordPress dashboard. Truth be told, I’m fearful of commercializing WordPress; on the other hand, I’m a huge fan of the belief that targeted advertising is good content and affiliate programs only appear where they work – I can’t say I’m distasteful of valuable products and services recommended through tools I use.
Win/win
At Outright.com, we’re offering free income and expense tracking, simple bookkeeping, to help entrepreneurs earning some money take care of their taxes. My target audience? The AdSense or affiliate plugin user; the blogger with some revenue from their blog, the blogger who has income to track, expenses to deduct, and taxes to pay. Contextual relevance to an AdSense plugin? You bet. And the performance has been exceptional.
Manoj Thulasidas set up such a partnership with his fantastic AdSense plugins. Conversion rates are high, validating demand from bloggers using AdSense for an effective, efficient, and inexpensive means of tracking their income and expenses. Grab Easy Adsenser to add AdSense banners and widgets to your blog posts and sidebar or use AdSense Now for a turnkey, simple integration.
If you reach bloggers earning some income through your plugins. Come check out what we’re doing through our affiliate program. You can get started quickly with ShareASale or if a LinkShare publisher, jump into our program through their Lead Advantage Network. I’d love to hear from anyone trying this; I know there are a few and I expect to find more success stories to share.