Affiliate Programs 101 - Getting Started
Searching for ways to make your blogging pay off? Affiliate programs are a great way to monetize your blog or website by displaying ads for related products and services, then earning money from resulting sales.
Most good affiliate programs provide you with an online administration website where you can log in and check your traffic and sales statistics, and download a variety of ads and banners to use on your website.
Basically, an “affiliate program” is an agreement you make with another company to sell their products and services, in return for a commission on sales. This is good for the company that offers an affiliate program because there are no up front marketing costs (other than initial program set up). The cost of the program — your commission — is not paid until a sale is made. There are some variations, where a company will pay you directly for traffic itself, but a percentage or set amount per sale is the most common form of affiliate compensation.
How much can you earn?
How much income can you earn from affiliate programs? This depends on a number of factors including how many prospects you send, and the strength of the actual service or product offer. Are there affiliate marketers who earn a good living this way? Yes. The average affiliate may earn a couple of hundred dollars a month.
Most good affiliate programs provide you with an online administration website where you can log in and check your traffic and sales statistics, and download a variety of ads and banners to use on your website.
Above are nine of 20 different widgets Amazon.com makes available to help affiliates make sales on their blogs and websites.
Historically, Amazon.com offered one of the first affiliate programs and still provides an excellent “associate program” which today offers you the ability to set-up and stock a complete online store with Amazon.com products of your choice. You can create your own complete stand-alone affiliate store, or just get some standard links and banners when you’re an Amazon.com associate.
Some companies, like Amazon.com, offer their own individual affiliate program, while other companies like Commission Junction offer hundreds of programs from different companies all under the same roof. Log in once, pick several programs, get all of the advertisements you need, track all of your statistics in one administration area, and get paid with one check, from this type of affiliate program aggregator.
Comparing Affiliate Programs
You can do a Google search for “affiliate programs” and you will find not only programs to compare, but also a number of affiliate program directories that categorize and rate programs for you.
Here’s a list of things to consider as you review and select affiliate programs:
- You will probably be more effective selling products and services for which you have a passion or interest.
- Try to identify a niche market where you can be effective selling affiliate products and service instead of taking a “supermarket” approach.
- Consider selling for companies that offer “residual” income. This means that you make a sale once, then enjoy regular payments (usually each month) for the duration of the time a customer stays with a service. One example is web hosting where monthly payments from customers translate to monthly residual commissions for you.
- Some companies offer “two-tier” programs which means that you not only earn commissions on your direct sales, but also from the sales of others that you recruit to become an affiliate for the same company.
And, be sure to compare the following companies’ affiliate programs:
About the Author: Scott Frangos is Managing Editor for WebHelperMagazine.com, and writes the OpenSourceWebMaster.com Blog there. He also builds dynamic Blog and CMS websites with WordPress for WebFadds.com and is a college level instructor for Graphics and WebMaster subjects. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife, Pepper, and their three dogs: Wisdom, Spirit, and Steggman, and is a great believer in the entrepreneurial power in affiliate programs.
Written by: Scott Frangos
This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 11:02 pm and is filed under Blogging Help, Online Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
