How can you make money with your website without even trying?
I’ll bet you have read a lot of headlines that sound similar to this one above, or make claims like this one. You have may have even read some of those articles all the way to the end, even clicked on some of the links in the article and read all the information on those links. When you finished, you may have thought you wasted your time… that won’t make money; I won’t promote that, I can’t do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL RUIN MY REPUTATION!
If you to it right, it can enhance your brand. I’m going to give you some tips that will give you an opportunity to monetize your website or blog, while preserving your brand. One of the best and easiest ways to monetize your online properties is to join some affiliate programs and advertise them on your site.
Affiliate programs are the answer
Why affiliate programs? Simple. When you are an affiliate of a affiliate marketing program, you can start selling products without having to wait on product development. All the work of writing an eBook, or recording an audio track, or programming a software product is taken care of by someone else. But there are more advantages than that. Also, you don’t have to create marketing materials and graphical materials – those are created for you by the affiliate program owner.
Another great benefit is that you really don’t have to keep track of finances or money. Better affiliate programs will provide the members affiliate management tools that are based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. These programs make it easy for you to follow how the ads you place on your site are doing, and how much commission you are earning.
Five tips for choosing affiliate offers to promote
- Look good earnings potential – You want to make sure that if one of the people you refer to an affiliate offer buys, that you will make some decent money. Some gurus recommend that you look for high percentage payouts. I prefer to look for opportunities where you can make a ‘big hit’ from a sale. This affiliate program for promoting 30/60/90 day sales plan templates gives you the opportunity to earn almost $50 per sale.
- Choose programs your readers will like – It is critical that you choose affiliate programs and offers that your audience will appreciate and be interested in. It wouldn’t be very effective to choose to promote affiliate programs and products for knitting and crochet products on a site that is dedicated to professional football. However, if you have a website that helps people find careers is sales, it would be great to promote something like How to Get Into Medical Sales.
- Look for affiliate programs powered by software – When you sign up for an affiliate program it will quickly become obvious if the owner of the program is serious about helping affiliate members be successful. If you are automatically redirected to a page for affiliate marketing software program, they are probably serious about their affiliate program. If they don’t have a managed affiliate program, it should give you pause. Their are several top name brands like iDev Affiliate, LinkShare, and JROX JAM. My favorite is JROX JAM, which you can get for free here: http://websitesthatdrivesales.com/recommends/free-affiliate-management-software.htm
- Make sure the website is NOT anonymous – What I mean is, make sure that there are real people standing behind the website, people with good reputations, who take customer service seriously. Affiliate program owners who let you know who give you contact information with phone numbers are more likely to treat you well. They are more likely to pay you on time and deal with you fairly. If you find a picture, bio, and phone number of the website owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to search the Internet to find any complaints about them or their program. Peggy McKee, the Medical Sales Recruiter, is one of the country’s leading sales recruiters – she proudly announces her site ownership on the about pages like this one: http://30-60-90-day-sales-plan.com/about/
- Choose affiliate programs that have support programs – If you are choosing a piece of software to buy, you probably wouldn’t purchase it if there was not support mechanism in place. You should use the same criteria when evaluating affiliate website offerings. If the website owner doesn’t have a support system in place – something like a ticket system or help desk software – then they probably don’t care about their customers. When they do, you can be fairly confident that they are trying to keep customers satisfied. If they AREN’T trying to keep customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your reputation.
Here are a couple of affiliate programs that I recommend if your site’s visitors would be interested in these subjects. One is an affiliate program for a sales interview tool that targets sales professionals – you can check it out here: http://30-60-90-day-sales-plan.com/affiliate-program-details/. The other is a program that has a broader appeal – it targets people who own businesses that either have no web presence or under performing websites; you can get all the information for it here: http://websitesthatdrivesales.com/blog/home/affiliate-program/
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