Posted by Ray White on December 28, 2009 Comments (2)

Becoming an internet marketer has low start-up costs. Your minimal start-up costs should include the monthly fees for an autoresponder service, the monthly fees for hosting, and the yearly registration fees for domain registration.

Hosting? Domain? But affiliate marketers can use the web pages provided by the products and services they are representing. Why pay for a domain and hosting? Do affiliate marketers need their own personal website?

In a word, yes.

Affiliate marketers don’t need to have their own website to sell other people’s products in that most products and services provide promotional tools to affiliates. You can use the tools provided to you and every other Tom, Dick and Harry that is hawking that product or service, but where does that get you? Smack in the middle of the pack. Part of the herd. Lost in a sea of web pages that look exactly like the one you are using. How does that get you sales? How does that build your email list?

Having your own personal domain puts you in control of your affiliate marketing business. With your own domain, you can advertise the way YOU want to and run your business the way you want to. Here is what you do for your business by having your own personal domain.

Brand yourself

Stake you claim on some internet real estate. Register your name or business name as a domain name and brand yourself. Funnel all of your traffic through that domain by housing your splash pages, banner images, squeeze pages, and blog on your personal domain. There are even ways to use your own domain for cloaking your affiliate links. Hosting packages usually include email accounts, too, so even your email address can be on your own domain under your name or business name. Let the people know who exactly they are dealing with. Brand your promotional tools with your personal domain name and let your customers know that they are buying from YOU, the affiliate marketer extraordinaire.

Control your advertising

Forget the promo tools provided by the program that all the other affiliates will be using. Stand head and shoulders above the crowd. Make your own unique splash pages and banner images and upload them to your domain. The url for those pages and images will have your domain name. Making your own pages means you control those pages. No surprise pop ups unless you put them there. Don’t simply build lists for other people. Make your own squeeze pages for your domain. Write a free report or ebook and upload it to your domain. Give them away to promote your products and build your own personal email list.

Host your own photos and logo online

Many programs allow you to personalize some affiliate tools with your picture or logo, but some of them won’t let you upload your image; they prefer that you host those images yourself. You can use one of the online photo sharing web sites, but you risk slow loading times because of the sheer volume of traffic on such huge sites. Loading time will be much faster if you have your images on your own domain. Having your own photos and logo images on your own domain is not only a convenience for you, but it is also a branding tool. Your photo, your logo, your own personal domain as the url. Talk about hitting someone over the head with the obvious!

Avoid unwanted third party advertising with paid hosting

Hopefully you are now convinced that you need your own domain. Just let me say one thing about paid hosting. Yes, there are free hosting packages available. They don’t cost you any money. Instead, the hosting company makes money by putting third party ads on your website. The only way to get rid of those pesky ads is to upgrade and pay for hosting.  Don’t fall into that trap. Search for the hosting package that makes the most sense for you, and expect to pay something for it.

Don’t have a domain yet? Start 2010 right and budget for a small expense that is invaluable for your business.