There are many methods affiliates use to promote their products online. Some might choose to promote through weekly or monthly newsletters. Others run email campaigns. Some do both. Some affiliates maintain websites which provide product reviews, informative or entertaining content. Others recommend and discuss products through their blogs. Obviously the amount of time and money you spend on your advertising, whatever form it might take, affects sales, as does how good your website or blog is and how believable your claims are in the eyes of the potential customer.

One thing guaranteed to work, no matter how promoted online, is the special report. Special reports can be written on any subject then given away online to promote products and services. A lot of affiliate managers write these reports then let their affiliates brand them and give them to members of their mailing lists or site visitors to get sales. It often works very well because they are distributed electronically, which costs nothing, and the customer can read these reports at their leisure and are not rushed into making any decision about whether or not to buy.

What Should My Report Be About?

You can write a special report about anything closely related to your product or service. It might present a problem that your product can solve. If you are selling something quite a common, the special report could explain new ways of using it or how to get the most from it.

It is also vital to provide information that your potential customers will enjoy reading and they can use. If your report is just an advertisement in disguise, your readers will see through it and that will put them off buying anything or reading anything further that comes from you. Give them something useful and they will be more inclined to read the report and hopefully buy your product at the end.

What If I Don't Write Well?

You don't need any qualifications to write a special report. You need a conversational writing style and the ablility to spell and use grammar correctly. If you're worried about spelling and grammar, you can use a proofreader or spellchecker.

If you don't want to write the report yourself, you can hire somebody else to do it. There are many freelance writers out there who are good at writing reports. They might even come up with a topic or some good ideas for the report.

If you want to have a go, remember to use short sentences, short paragraphs and don't be unnecessarily wordy. Keep the report brief and to the point and you can use humor if you want.

What is Branding?

Branding is when you add the individual affiliate's links to the special report so they will get the commission for sales resulting from its distribution. You can use a program to create the report. There are free software programs you can use to add affiliate links. Use these to brand the reports for each affiliate or offer the reports to the affiliates so they can be in charge of branding their own.

Branded special reports are extremely valuable to affiliates. By distributing the reports, sales can be increased, which is beneficial to everybody involved.