Affiliate Marketing: The Importance of the Giveaway Item

Here, we are going to assess the value of giveaway items in affiliate marketing programs and why you should make them a part of your own marketing plan. You can easily figure out from the first sentence that I do believe that using giveaways is a good idea and I'll tell you why. Also, I'll tell you what to look for and what not to do in your own marketing efforts.

The first and most important reason the most successful marketing programs use giveaways is to "beef up" the value of the purchase. Most people love to receive a little extra bonus when buying something and people respond especially well to unexpected bonuses. In affiliate marketing, the free downloads offered before or after a purchase can really boost the affiliate's chance of marketing that product if the giveaway is of value to them and their business. In particular, if the giveaway helps to facilitate the marketing of that product or service, it can really improve the chances that the affiliate will stay with it long enough to get some good results from their efforts.

Examples of those kinds of giveaway items are advertising tips, pre-written emails, HTML codes for affiliates to use on their websites to promote the product or service. In addition, the top product creators will give items with product resale rights called PRR or master resale rights referred to as MRR. These can be valuable as it provides the affiliate with a giveaway item to use in their own marketing efforts.

Another effective giveaway item on a purchase can be a free download of another product that they would ordinarily have to pay money to get. This gives the buyer a sense of getting a 2-for-1 deal and is a very effective method used to get potential buyers to take action.

Many marketers will use a giveaway just for having a person provide their name and email address. As anyone in this business knows, the money is in the list, so this can be a very profitable trade-off for the marketer if he gives something of value.

When choosing which affiliate marketing program to sign up for you, arguably, can use the value of the giveaways for the affiliates as one criteria in making your decision. The giveaways for the new affiliates can include creating custom squeeze pages and sales pages to facilitate the advertising and marketing efforts for that particular program.

All other aspects aside, it's hard to argue against the idea that making it easier for potential affiliates to promote a program as being anything other than a good thing.

Now that I've sang praises of the value of giveaways it's time to talk about potential negatives and that includes giveaways with little or no value. Giveaways to potential affiliates should be something that helps them to promote the product or service. They are the most effective. The better the affiliate can promote the product, the more likely it is all involved will profit.

For end user products or services, value of a giveaway is more subjective. It probably should be something that entertains or is something the buyer can be reasonably expected to put to use in their own lives. Otherwise that giveaway is fairly meaningless and will not likely help get you any sales.

So, whether you are an affiliate marketer looking for a program or you are looking for affiliates to market your product or service one, of the many, ways to judge the value of an affiliate program is to assess the value of the giveaways.