The Blue Ocean and Red Ocean strategy has been discussed and debated for offline marketing for years and while the Blue ocean strategy has worked for some, it is the Red Ocean one that has taken some offline marketers towards success. The fact is that either of these strategies can be used for online marketing as well.

For online marketing, sort out the products and services from the long brainstorming list that you have based on your target market. Make sure that you do not assume the products and services that you online customer will prefer to check out. Researching the interests of your online audience is easy and quick and you should be able to get your answers within a week but setting up a survey online.

The next thing that you can do to reduce the list of items that you are considering is to chuck of the items that do not get you enough revenue or commission. This is something that should be based on the quantity that you expect to sell in addition to the revenue per piece. Some high value items are bought very infrequently and on the other hand there are some low value items that are purchased in large quantities making the equation reach the same results. However the Blue Ocean strategy recommends that you choose the high value ones over the smaller ones that increase your inventory.

Understanding your customer and adding some relevant aspects to the product or service can help you raise the price considerably. An insight into the customer can make the difference between high profits and relatively low ones.

The Blue Ocean strategy does not recommend blasting off emails to customers without aiming. The communication with the customer needs to be deliberate and specific so that you can engage the customer into purchasing the products and services that he requires.

Marketing tactics such as social marketing are a must as part of this strategy. This marketing tactic allows you to understand and communicate with each individual person or customer in a manner that makes him feel special. And a high value customer expects just that – special treatment!

Affiliate marketing is an area that has become extremely popular over time. In fact, the loss of jobs during the recession time has resulted in various people looking at independent means of income and a large number of them found affiliate marketing a convenient, low investment option that they could benefit from.

Some of the things that you need to understand while opting to take the affiliate marketing path are:

- While there are various sites that will have you believe this, Internet marketing of any kind is not a ‘get rich quick’ option that many people claim it to be. While the investment required for starting a venture like affiliate marketing is not high, the amount of effort that is required to make it a success is high.

- Before starting off on your affiliate marketing venture, make sure that you read a lot about the options that you have. There is no single right approach to the whole thing and different marketing tactics work in different niches.

- The choice of the affiliate network that you want to attach yourself with is extremely important. Do not rush this decision because it can make or break the entire venture. Check out the merchant site, the products and do not shy away from trying some of the client products as well. It is only when you are convinced about the efficacy of the products or services on your own, can you really promote the products in a convincing manner.

- Not only do you need to be wary of the merchant that you select, make sure that you get an understanding of the compensation structure adequately. Affiliate marketing is generally based on pay per sale while there are some merchants that also offer minimal compensation for clicks that land on their site. So conversions are a necessity for you to make money.

- For the site that you want to create to use to direct the customer to the merchant, you have various options. You can choose to blog, create a content site, start a discount site or even a membership one. Neither of these options guarantee success and each of these can lead you to the path of online monies if you are diligent about the manner in which you go about your online marketing strategy.

Many merchants are aware of the fact that a goof affiliate program is one of the best tactics of Internet marketing that can be used. However, just as any other marketing tactic, it needs to be implemented properly for it to be a success. There are various aspects that contribute to making an affiliate program a success. The most important aspect of a successful affiliate program is that it needs to be defined in a manner that ensures a win-win situation for the merchant and for the affiliate as well. And this is not something that can be achieved, keeping the below mentioned points in mind.

-       Conversion rate – The conversion rate is the proportion of people who make a purchase after they reach the merchant site. While sending the customer to the client site is something that the affiliate needs to achieve, it is important that the merchant site do its job for conversion as well. If the product or service offered by the merchant is not attractive enough, it is not likely to achieve conversions.

-       Commission percentage – The commission percentage is generally based on a proportion of the revenue that the affiliate sends to the merchant site. If the commission is not adequate the affiliate may feel as if the effort is not compensated well. This percentage should be decided based on the frequency of purchase of the niche and the outlay too. Big ticket items that are bought less often tend to have a larger commission.

-       Manual recruitment – While there is no upfront cost in approving any affiliate who applies, it has been seen that creating a large fleet of affiliates may not help the purpose of increasing revenue. This is mainly because Pareto’s principle applies here too and the top 20 percent of the affiliates bring in a large part of the revenue. You can avoid the hidden training and management costs by approving affiliates manually and ensuring that you have an affiliate network that is extremely effective and efficient.

Merchant-affiliate relationship – Last but not the least, the relationship between the merchant and the affiliate based on customized and timely training and regular, frequent and relevant communication.

Many online marketers have moved beyond just search engine optimization and content development in their online marketing strategies. One such strategy that allows online marketers to increase the reach and awareness of their products and services is affiliate programs. Affiliate programs allow marketers (or merchants as they are called in the affiliate arena) to recruit a large set of affiliates who, in turn, market the products and services of the merchant for a percentage commission on sales.

Companies that run large affiliate programs do so via affiliate networks like Commission Junction or LinkShare so that they are able to manage the affiliates better. Others manage their fleet of affiliates on their own.

It is also common for merchants to have an automated system of approving affiliates to ensure that the web of affiliates becomes increasingly larger. This is a decision that is taken on the belief that the larger the affiliate network the wider the reach will be. However, what is often forgotten is the fact that each of the affiliates that gets added on to the network needs to be trained and communicated to. Each of these affiliates needs communication too. It has been seen that customized and individual communication leads to better relationship between the merchant and the affiliate, in turn resulting in better conversions.

Therefore it is important to choose affiliates based on some factors and these are listed below.

-       Site design – Check out the site design of the affiliate that you are evaluating. A site that has too many graphics is likely to take a long time to load. And you need to understand that online customers do not have the kind of patience that regular shoppers do. If you have an affiliate whose site takes ages to open, you are not likely to get conversions from them.

-       Image – The affiliates that you choose will have an impact on the image of your company. So make sure that the affiliates that you do approve in the recruitment process are those who have a good quality site that exudes confidence and trust. Affiliates that have a tacky image will only make your business look tack as well.

-       Content – A large number of affiliates create content sites to pass on customers to your site. This is because many people access the Internet to be able to access information. Make sure that the content affiliates that you choose have good quality content on their site that is optimized in a reader friendly manner. It is also obvious that an affiliate site that has good content that is optimized well will attract more customers, thereby increasing the chances of the customer clicking on your link and making a purchase at your site.

-       Traffic – Most obviously, an affiliate that has a high level of traffic will result in a higher number of people coming into your site for the purchase. This obviously depends on the content and quality of the affiliate site. However, it does guarantee that the base is large enough to begin with.

Following these basic principles while approving affiliates can help you choose effectively and ensure that most of your affiliates are high performing ones.

The concept of super affiliates is soon catching up. While it was once believed that adding on affiliates would help the online merchants reduce their marketing spends, the new data shows that it is only the top 20 percent of the affiliates that bring in 80 percent or more of the revenue for the merchant.

In addition to that, while adding on affiliates may not seem to suck in upfront cash, training and managing the affiliates takes up time and effort, both of which can be converted into potential loss of revenue. Therefore the affiliate marketing industry is seeing a shift from quantity to quality.

The best affiliates for a merchant are called super affiliates. These are the business partners that have high traffic sites that have customers that are similar to the merchants target audience. Super affiliates tend to have some specific characteristics that can be used to identify them. If one wants to ensure that only serious affiliates are added onto the affiliate network, then ensuring that the affiliate recruitment process is not automatic is the first step.

Some of the characteristics of super affiliates that set them apart are listed here:

-       Email marketing – Super affiliates are great email marketers. They have a large database of contacts and updated email addresses since they take pains to keep the mailing lists updated. These are generally lists that they create with opt ins or newsletter subscriptions. Super affiliates use this robust database to market new products, announce new merchant schemes,

-       Different options – Super affiliates are entrepreneurs who know that they have to keep improvising as they move along in the Internet marketing arena. Just when one starts to get the handle of a particular technology and idea, there is another one that starts to surface. Staying abreast with the trends and ensuring that they think of new ways of doing things is a unique characteristic of super affiliates.

-       Training – Since the success that super affiliates get in a few months, the one thing that they become immensely capable of is grooming new affiliates for the merchant. There are many super affiliates that have actually created their own sites to sell and share their capabilities and experience in affiliate marketing. Others have gone on to become part of the two tier model where they have affiliates under them so that they can be groomed to become self sufficient. The two tier model allows the super affiliates to earn a commission based on the revenue that the newbie gets in.

-       Affinity model – A large number of super affiliates have been seen to use the affinity model. This really means that super affiliates tend to focus on one particular program. While the merchant may have different categories, the super affiliate may try and market the merchant’s products in various different and more targeted categories.

An increasingly larger number of merchants are realizing that unless they are careful about the quality if affiliates that they choose, the hidden costs of recruiting, training and managing the truckloads of affiliates will only start to prove unprofitable for an organization.

Affiliate marketing as a concept has seen a large amount of growth in the recent past. The concept of recruiting affiliates to market for their products is something that has caught the fancy of online merchants to a large extent. And there is adequate reason for why online merchants prefer to use affiliate marketers rather than take on the task of marketing their sites on their own. Here are some of the advantages of choosing to have an affiliate network.

-       Recession proof – Affiliate marketing is considered to be a strategy that is recession proof. With marketing costs that have been outsourced and compensation of the affiliates purely on the basis of performance and sale, there is no need to cut costs for marketing efforts when and if recession hits.

-       Low cost per acquisition – The genesis of affiliate marketing has basis in the growing cost of acquisition of a customer. With mushrooming websites, banner ads and online search engine optimization were proving to be too expensive for online merchants. Today the cost of acquisition of a customer through an affiliate program is as low as $15 as an approximate cost of $30 per customer based on banner ads.

-       Payment on sales only – The current model of pay per sale ensures that there is no fraud involved in the manner in which affiliates send over customers to the merchant site. While affiliates can potentially create click throughs that are not genuine, the compensation based on a proportion of sales ensures that the merchant interests are protected.

-       Wider reach – Recruiting affiliates is not a difficult task. In fact there are many merchants that approve affiliate applications automatically since they have a standard training module that they share with all affiliates and therefore they there is no extra cost of acquiring affiliates. However, a large number of affiliates working for your site can ensure that word about your products and services reaches a wider audience, something that a merchant cannot possibly dream of doing alone.

-       Reduced marketing costs – With the marketing outsourced to a fleet of affiliates, the costs of marketing for the merchant reduce significantly. Statistics show that if a merchant increases the number of affiliates by 20 percent, they can reduce the marketing spends by approximately 10 percent on an annual basis.

-       Better focus on strategic aspects – With the day to day marketing efforts left to the affiliates, the brand team at the merchant’s office has far more time to concentrate on strategic matters to help grow the website and the brand further. Aspects such as the new products to launch, additional product lines and the like can be delved into and implemented.

-       Leave it to the specialists – Affiliate marketers are far more adept at customer conversions given the fact that they specialize in the specific area rather than conversions that happen otherwise. They are aware of the kind of information that the customers are looking for, whether it is brand comparisons, reviews or product descriptions. Surprisingly, a study found that customers that logged into the merchant site directly had a lower rate of conversion than those that came in through affiliate sites.

Affiliate marketing is not only beneficial for online merchants. It is a phenomenon that is a win-win situation and therefore has great appeal. The affiliates do not need to invest in inventory or worry about launch failures. They can also operate from any location that they wish to. All in all, affiliate marketing is a concept that seems like it is here to stay!