It’s predicted that social media marketing will be the big thing for many companies in 2010. They’re jumping on this particular bandwagon because they know they’ll make sales. But can affiliate marketers make sales on these sites?

The major challenge with making sales on popular sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube is that the traffic is focused on entertainment. People don’t visit the sites to buy, they visit to enjoy time with their friends. However you can certainly make sales if you approach the process in the right way.

Here are three ways to sell:

1. Integrate Twitter and Facebook With Your Website or Blog: It Increases Stickiness

Popular, fun sites can help to build traffic to your blog. Once readers reach your blog, your aim is to get them to read as much of your content as possible. Although they may not buy on their first visit, they’re becoming familiar with you, and they may buy on a subsequent visit.

There are many ways to integrate Twitter and other sites with your blog. Most major blogging platforms offer plug-ins and widgets to display your latest postings on your blog.

2. Build Relationships and Sell

One of the benefits of the social media sites is that they help you to build relationships with prospective buyers. You become a real person, and buyers prefer to buy from people they know.

Ensure that most comments you make are simple friendly interactions, rather than pitches — however don’t stray completely off-topic. You’ll need to stay on topic to increase your targeted traffic. Remember that by and large, this traffic is of low value. So you’ll need many more visitors to achieve conversions.

3. Listen to the Conversation: Can Your Affiliate Products Solve Problems?

Use the search tools which are available on the sites you’ve chosen. Set up alerts for keywords related to your affiliate products. Then just listen to the conversation, and respond as appropriate.

When you’re responding, ensure that you avoid direct selling. Forward people to a helpful blog post you’ve written, or offer your own insights. Sales happen on your affiliate products’ sales pages; you’re offering fun, as well as information.

Need a fast flood of traffic? Try this great new social bookmarking and blog commenting tool.

You’ve created an information product, and you’re raring to go. You (or your copywriter) wrote the sales page, but there’s a stumbling block… testimonials.

In short, you need them, but how do you get them?

Testimonials have been around a long time in the offline world, and having testimonials on your online sales page or website is no different. People are giving their endorsement of your product, and this goes a long way as social proof. Potential buyers may be on the fence about buying your product but when they see positive comments from others who have tried and benefited from the product, they see it as proof that it works.

Getting testimonials may not take much effort on your part if you’re a well-known marketer who has a trusting relationship with your list, but it takes a little more work if you’re untried and unknown.

Here’s what you can do to get testimonials:

Offer your product free on a forum you frequent in exchange for honest comments, and a testimonial if they liked it. Some may see this as bribery, but really you are asking them for honest feedback. Sometimes they give constructive criticism that you can use to improve your product before you release it for sale to the public. Put a limit on the number you’ll give away for free to get comments or you’ll get bombarded with too many requests.

If you see a request from someone else to try their product and leave them a testimonial, do it. When you’re done reviewing it and offering a sincere (not over the top and gushy) testimonial, you can ask them to do the same for you.

Think about calling in some favors. Have you helped out a fellow marketer in the past by proofing his copy, leaving lots of comments on his blog, or retweeting all his promotions? Ask for the testimonial. Email him a request and don’t forget to add the link for his complimentary copy. And who knows, he might like it enough to want to become an affiliate.

Go to your list. Explain that you will give out your new product for free to the first 5 or 7 people if they promise to give you a testimonial/feedback in 48 hours. Not only do you get testimonials but this works to create some buzz around your product.

This is a bit after the fact, but you can always put a request for feedback or positive comments in a READ ME file in the zip folder that goes out to everyone who buys your product. Grab the first couple positive responses and quickly put them up on your sales page.

Give a time limit on all your requests to keep people focused. Send them reminders when the time is up and many of them will drop everything to comply. But keep in mind there are some people who will take the product and run without so much as a thank you or testimonial, so ask for more of them than you think you’ll need.

Testimonials are a very important way to help convince potential buyers to purchase your product. They are the social proof you need on your sales page so take some time gathering them, preferably before your product goes live.

Are you making all the sales you need? Get persuasive copy written by a top copywriter. I (Angela Booth) have been online for a couple of decades, and I’ve been writing copy for longer than that. Persuasion isn’t optional: it’s the difference between a business goldmine and survival. Get persuasive Web copywriting that works.

Selling info products online is a great way to make an income. However, the marketing takes a lot of time and energy, and money too.

If you have created a product, and want to sell a lot of it, but don’t have a lot of money to invest in marketing, you may want to consider starting an affiliate program. Offering an affiliate program will allow you to develop a sales force throughout the world. And the best part is, you will only have to pay them after they make a sale.

There are several options for managing your affiliate program. You can choose to have a third party affiliate network handle the tracking for you. However, some of the companies charge a sizable fee.

If you are technically inclined, you can install scripts onto your server. You can also hire someone to do this. Be advised that if something goes wrong, you will need to hire someone to fix the problem.

You can also choose to subscribe to a shopping cart system that includes an affiliate management system, such as 1shoppingcart.com. These programs are great because they not only include the shopping cart and affiliate manager, they also include an autoresponder.

To help your affiliates sell more of your product, you will want to create some tools for them to use. You can have images and graphics of your product as well as text links. You may also want to create some sales letters, articles, and special reports that they can use on their website to gain publicity for your products.

Stay in contact with your affiliates by sending them motivating emails; create excitement and urgency with your affiliates by offering incentives. For instance, you can have a contest where the affiliate that sells the most during a certain time period wins a prize. You can also offer coaching to help them determine ways to increase their sales.

You don’t have to wait for people to join your affiliate program. You can recruit affiliates. Visit sites that are complimentary to yours and ask the website owner if they would like to partner with you. You can send them a sample product, and offer them a special commission. For instance, if you normally offer 40% commission, offer these special partners 50%.

Another option is to outsource this work to an affiliate manager, also known as an AM. They can handle the day to day tasks of your affiliate program as well as recruiting new affiliates and answering current affiliate’s questions.

Paying a monthly fee for your affiliate managing program, and possibly the salary of an affiliate manager will take a way from your profits, but the fact is that you will be able to sell so much more product with an affiliate team than you could by yourself that these costs more than pay for themselves.