#Q4Prep – Affiliates: 4 Traffic Sources You May Not Be Aware Of

While the Google search market is pretty crowded, you may have better luck with alternative search engines such as Bing.   Bing is a quality search engine, and their PPC product is gaining popularity with Affiliates and Marketers alike.    Bid prices are typically a little lower but can represent a quality stream of traffic for you.

Note:  Pay close attention to PPC Bidding rules of all of your Merchant partners – bidding on restricted words such as trademarks, domain names, mis-spellings etc… is a quick way to fall out of compliance on the ShareASale Network.

Ever wonder where those links come from for “related content” on the bottom of major news sites such as ABCNews, CNN, FoxNews and other high-traffic content sites?   Outbrain powers a large percentage of them and in the right setting can be a great source of traffic for Affiliates.

If you focus on content marketing, this is worth a look.

First, make sure you watch this video from College Humour which was one of the funnier things I watched all year…  

Instagram can be a source of traffic, if you can get a little creative with your posts and ideas.   I loved the below article that discussed how (mostly larger) brands can utilize Instagram to generate buzz for their products and services.

Take a quick look, you may be inspired to something similar that will help you drive traffic to your Affiliate sites and blogs.

Assuming you are already capturing email addresses of your visitors, your own newsletter can be one of your best sources of #Q4 traffic.

Customers, during this season especially, are aware of the great volume of deals available out there… and they rely on you to let them know when deals pop up!  While I would usually suggest a minimalist approach to email marketing (less is more!) – during Q4, shoppers are eager and more tolerant of email volume if it helps them find the deal they’ve been looking for!