What is the point of having a website, you may ask, when the affiliate programme you have joined has provided you with your own web page to promote? This is a fair question. The answer has to be that with your own site - and of course your own domain name - you will have a lot more control over your business. Here are four reasons why you should be grabbing your piece of internet real estate - right now.

1) To begin with, it serves as the focal point for your business. Once you have it properly set up you can have all sorts of pages leading off from it, effectively creating an entire network of interlinked pages. Adding fresh, unique content to your site on a regular basis, can also help take your site from obscurity to top rankings on the major search engines in a relatively short space of time, resulting in high profile exposure for whatever business you are operating.

This is not a pipe dream that only top level search engine optimisation experts can achieve. Anyone can do it. Believe me. Try to remember this simple process whenever you add something to your site:

* build a page with fresh content relating to the theme of your site.
This can of course be on the subject of the product you are promoting, whether it is your own or someone else's.
* optimise it with appropriate title and description tags
* make sure it is linked to the home page
* give the page itself a descriptive name

2) Another rock solid reason for having your own website is so that you can take advantage of some really neat scripts and features you can add to it, such as a classified ad service, a pay per click service, a search engine, even a web hosting service. Some of these features can also make you a healthy income.

3) You can use a web page as the gateway to an automated followup system that is activated whenever a visitor submits his contact details via a form. Why would your visitors give you their details? Because you have something they want. And you are going to give it to them in exchange for their name and email address. This can be a free report, ebook or other product.

Once they submit their details, the first of a series of emails is sent to them containing whatever they requested - together with an ad for the product or service you are promoting. You should also set the system up to send them further emails over a period covering about a month.

By setting up such pages and systems you are leaving yourself free to concentrate on developing your business and bringing in new visitors. Which brings us to the fourth rock solid reason for having a web site.

4) Joint ventures. This is another excellent reason to have your own site and either your own product to sell or one which you have the resell rights for. Don't be put off by the thought of approaching other business owners with a joint venture proposal. Just go to your favourite search engine and do a search under "ezine directories" then contact a handful of publishers whose ezines fall into the same category as the product you are selling and offer them a (sizeable) percentage on any sales they generate.

You supply them with the ad copy, or work with them to produce something that their readers are likely to respond to - then sit back (but not for long) and wait for the sales to start coming in. If you have found the right partner and he or she has a sizeable subscriber base, this could result in quite a healthy return.

In order to enter into a joint venture arrangement you would, of course, need to set up a special page that your joint venture partner will send their subscribers to. Make sure you insert their name or Affiliate ID into your payment buttons. This can easily be done in PayPal by simply adding it after the name of the product.

Copyright 2005 Robert Evans