Affilliate Programs

If you have a website, and you want to make money from it you should consider joining an affiliate program. Becoming an affiliate means you can make money by advertising and promoting the products of other merchants from your website. This is generally done by placing banners and text links on your site. When a visitor clicks on a merchant’s banner or text link they arrive at the merchant’s website whereupon the visitor may make a purchase from which you will earn a commission. The results of promoting someone else’s products however, can vary enormously. Simply putting up a banner or a text link on your website is unlikely to generate much commission, unless you receive many thousands of daily visitors. But if you’re willing to learn a few simple marketing techniques, such as pre-selling through recommendations, even with a small website you could soon start building up a useful income. You can apply what you learn from affiliate marketing to sell almost anything you can think of. But ideally your first priority should be to sign up with merchants that sell products your website visitors are interested in. For example, if you wanted to advertise pet food on a ‘Tips for breeding dogs’ website then you’re much more likely to generate a sale and earn a commission than you would if you placed the advert on a site for ‘How to build a PC’ because most of your visitors simply wouldn’t be interested in pet food. So always look for products and services that are compatible with the content of your site. You may be surprised at the range of products and services available from merchants who require website publishers to promote their stuff. To get some idea I suggest you take a peek at one of the best affiliate network directories on the net Commission junction. It’s free to join and there is no charge to link up with any of the merchants listed. Everything is simple and straightforward. You get quick access to the html code for all the banners and text links you need as well as daily statistics of how many sales you make and which advertisements are working well and which ones aren’t. All you need to get started is some basic knowledge of how to cut and paste the linking code into your web pages. This is the code that has your affiliate identification embedded into it to accurately track all sales. Promoting other peoples’ products through an affiliate program is a useful way to generate income using your website. You don’t need to hold any stock or have the responsibility to fulfill the order or take payment. You simply get paid for introducing the buyer to the seller and when a sale is made your obligation ends there. There are a number of ebooks and articles available online that can help you learn more about affiliate marketing. My advice is to seek out the people who are already making substantial incomes from promoting affiliate programs and learn from them. People like Rosalind Gardner for example, whose monthly turnover is in excess of $20.000 per month, simply from promoting affiliate programs using simple methods that anyone can learn and put into practice.