Before You Get Started: Familiarity With HTML
This post is the first post in a series of posts that will go into further detail of the ten bite-sized affiliate marketing tips published on the MediaTrust blog in late July.
As with any profession or expertise, in order to prepare yourself to succeed at a higher level, you must know the fundamental basics. On the web the fundamental programming language is HTML. Even though it’s the most basic and easy to use code language, most affiliates still use HTML and CSS to create their landing pages. This is mostly because HTML is simple and can be learned literally within a couple days, which makes it the easiest to edit and optimize. This is important because any successful affiliate knows that in order to increase or maintain profit margins, constant testing and editing of new landing page variations is necessary. A Google search of “learn HTML and CSS” will give you more than enough information to learn the language quickly for free.
Now remember I specifically mentioned “familiarity” because its not essential to know how to completely code and design the landing pages you make; the most effective styles and designs will likely come from the web designers that create unique pages on a daily basis. So, it is still important that you understand the page if there is a small error that you need to fix, and of course to place a conversion pixel in order to test which of your pages performs the best. Once you have an understanding of HTML, it will become much easier for you to optimize your site with whichever tracking tool(s) that you chose to use. Here are a few great posts on site optimization by MediaTrust’s own web designer Matt Richmond.
Another valuable use of any marketers time is to understand the jargon of the mediums they are using to advertise on. A list of commonly used terms associated with internet marketing can be found here. This is an affiliates first step to becoming a so called “savvy’ internet marker. After learning the basics on how landing pages work on the back end with HTML and CSS, the next step is to of course use that knowledge to setup a campaign to promote an offer. Note that if you do not plan on using a landing/bridge/upsell page its still essential that you are familiar with HTML in order to understand how simple web pages function with links to creatives, pixels, etc..
