How to make money with affiliate programs
Welcome, here I am going to share with you my favourite ways to make money online through using affiliate programs.
As you know I am the webmaster of this site which I created after my experiences of writing a personal website. Although I sell none of my own products or services through my website I am making money online, infact, I benefit from a rather handsome amount of profits each month!
How is this? Well, as you’ve probably notice I am a member of Google Adsense, I therefore diplay targeted ads on my site, and some of my monthly income is through Adsense. But, this is only one of my income streams, the tip of the ice berg.
The other income streams are ones which may have skipped your notice. The majority of my earnings come in through affiliate programs. The number one affiliate program which I use on my site is Site Build It. This is, if you do not already know, a piece of software with which a beginner can completely design and build a successful site which recieves traffic from the search engines. By genuinely reccommending this fine product people click on the link and they themselves purchase Site Build It. I then get a cut of the money as an affiliate’s bonus. Site Build It is not the only affiliate program which I run on Adsense Hero. I aslo run Host gator. A web hosting company, again, i reccommend this company to my viewers as being a reliable and excellent web hosting company, (entirely true). As with SBI, some people follow my reccommendation and I get a slither of the profits too.
Traffic is the key, with no traffic you will never earn any money from a website, neither through affiliate programs nor from selling a product or service. Anyway, given that you have a site with traffic, and are looking for methods to monetise it then there is no better way than by using affiliate programs.
But which affiliate programs??? Well, there are many different ones to choose from. You may be suprised which businesses accept affiliates, the most common ones are web hosting companies, casinos and insurance companies.
If you are going to be successful then there is one key question you must ask yourself. That is,
“Do I have a passion for, and believe in this company’s product or service”.
If the answer to this question is no, then dont bother becoming one of their affiliates. You need to be able to make the product or service sell itself in order to get the all important ‘affiliate link click’!
The best way of doing this is to give a good truthful introduction to the product, describing its benefits, it doesnt even harm to mention its weak points. Remember, you must seek to build a relationship with your reader. In order to gain a large amount of credibility with your reader it is a great idea to affiliate with a company which you know PERSONALLY.
My example is Site Build It, SBI. I own their product and it has worked miracles for me, this is why you are able to read this article on my site today. Because I believe in this product I can help people make the decision to click on my affiliates link without being persuasive. Simply by informing them and giving them the facts.
Things not to do.... Well as always, theres lots. Basically stick to things you know. If you have read any of my previous articles you will know that in my time on the internet I have tried dozens of different methods of making money (failing one by one).
To give you just one example, I once set up a website which reccommended ‘the best deals on online casinos’. This website simply gave the names of a few different online casinos, the special deal they were doing at the time, and then below was my affiliate link. I spent a fortune on getting people to visit this site, by using google adwords. After a month of spending I did not manage to get one single sign up. In other words I lost money left, right and centre simply because I was greedy. I chose to become an affiliate with casinos simply because they give great payouts on new sign ups who come from your affiliate link. However, I knew nothing about online casinos and I assume that people saw the site for what it was. A total waste of mine and their time. The transparent efforts of a guy who was desperate to make money.
Welll... there you go, this article has turned into a confession. But hey, you wont be tempted by your greed now will you?! Remember stick to what you know and your affiliate link will get the click! After all, with an honest and concise description alongside a quality product or service that you have chosen to affiliate with getting the click should be a piece of cake! And in return like I do now, you will recieve a nice big cheque!
