On WPBay, you can make 25% of a referred user’s purchases. Learn how the referral program works.
There are a variety of ways you can attract users to the WPBay marketplace through your referral link. In fact some of our users make more money through referrals than they do through item sales.
Writing Posts
Use your blog or a guest blog to write about an area of interest that is related to the service you’re marketing. For example you could write an article about finding podcast related WordPress plugins on a podcasting blog and link to WPBay using your referral id.
If the site you’re posting on is not your own, be sure to seek permission to insert an affiliate link beforehand. Some site owners will prefer that you don’t do this, and others might just be annoyed that you didn’t let them know explicitly.
With each post you write to take advantage of a referral program, stick to one program. Don’t try to market two or three services at once; focus on one and give it all your attention.
Featuring Items
You can use your site or a social service to feature an item, using your referral link. This could be a post, a sidebar widget, or a tweet on Twitter. If you’re featuring an item using your own website, it’s not so different from writing a post as previously discussed.
On a service like X.com, ensure the item is of interest to the people following you and be brief, but useful and clear. You might say, “Here’s a cool preloader plugin you might find useful for a new WordPress site – link.”
Promote items via services like X judiciously. People don’t like being marketed to in a social context, so present items you feel would really benefit the people who’ll be reading your message and don’t be pushy.
Banner Ads
Banner ads can be an effective way to refer visitors and potential sign-ups, depending on the banner used and its position on the page, as well as a variety of other factors that we won’t go into here.
Remember to keep banners above the fold where they’re clearly visible, and don’t clutter the page with too many ads. You’ll make more money running one or two ads per page than if you run ten because the visitor’s focus will be drawn in too many different directions.
Above the fold means the section of the website that can be seen when the page loads without any scrolling. If you have to scroll to see something on the page, it is below the fold. This is all fairly dependent on screen size and resolution. A good guideline resolution is Full HD (1920×1080).
Text Ads
If you don’t want to run banner ads but don’t fancy generating content to promote your referral link, you can drop a text ad into your site sidebar, or before or after content sections. These should be brief, but clear and descriptive. For instance, you could advertise WPBay as follows:
Visit WPBay for affordable and effective WordPress plugins or themes. Don’t waste time doing the work that’s already been done!
You then link up all or part of the copy with your referral link.
Write your copy with your site in mind. Target it to the audience that is most likely to see it; if you’re running a site about WordPress, then a copy that advertises WPBay would focus on the large array of WordPress themes on sale, as opposed to themes in general.
Forum Signatures
If you frequently contribute to a forum, you could use your affiliate link in your signature. Make sure the link is relevant to the forum you are posting on, or you may as well leave it out altogether. Also, it’s a good idea to get involved in the forum and become accepted as a member of the community before peddling goods, even if you are only posting a non-obtrusive ad in your signature.
If you’ve chosen your forums wisely in terms of topic and coverage, there will be times when people ask if anyone knows a good site for acquiring a certain type of item. This is a good time to pop in and be helpful by pointing the user to one of the WPBay Marketplace, if the query matches one of our sites.
No matter how you choose to promote on a forum, always get to know the community and become a solid part of it before considering any form of promotion. Even then, keep it low-key, honest, and non-obtrusive.