Okay, you know your niche market. You have a dot com name and a place to host your site. You have done a rough draft of your site on paper, created the web pages and checked all the links, then made the web site live and full of content. [If you haven't done these steps, start here for instructions.] Now you need something to sell, but don't know where to go.
One option is to sell your own stuff. For a novice, that process may seem overwhelming since you either need to make your own product or contact a wholesaler or dropship company and set up your trade agreement. Then you have to figure out a way to accept payment. If you want to take credit cards, you need to get a merchant account which can cost upwards to $200 a month, even if you do no business. Plus you have to deal in customer service issues such as settling customer complaints, making sure your product gets where it is supposed to be, refunds...
Really, all those things are not that complicated once you have a solid business plan. However, if you want to start out really easy, consider an affiliate program.
Affiliates programs are made up of already established businesses that offer a variety of products. They have the merchandise. They ship it to your customer. They handle all customer service. In return you receive a percentage of anywhere from 1-50% of the transaction made by your customer.
Some affiliate programs pay you each time a customer just clicks on a link at your site. Click throughs are very easy and passive income, but not really that profitable unless you have a huge amount of traffic. They pay anywhere from 1¢ - 25¢ and sometimes more. Since they track the IP address of the person clicking the link, it is not a good idea to try and trick the system by personally clicking your link repeatedly. Doing that or other cheat methods are a quick way to get booted out of the affiliate program.
Other affiliate programs pay you a percentage of the sale made from your link or from a lead given from your link. A lead is basically a click through where the customer does not make a purchase, but leaves a name and contact information. When set up properly, those affiliate programs can make you a decent income.
Affiliate programs generally are favored when you find a stationary spot for that sponsor. It can be in the form of a banner ad at the bottom of your site. Never put a banner link of anyone else's site above yours UNLESS you have content they were looking for in the first place. If they see another banner that is more interesting than your page, they will leave your site.) There are java and cgi scripts available if you wish to automatically rotate your banners if you have a lot of sponsors, but few pages of content. Some affiliate programs have rotating banners where you can rotate all of your sponsors using one simple code.
Or you can promote it in a text form embedded within the content of your site. For instance, if your affiliate program is about books and your niche is antique cars, you can feature links on web page that tie into what the affiliate program sells. This not only adds content, but it creates a potential sale.
Affiliate programs can also be featured in your newsletter. Rotate those affiliate programs as the sponsor of your newsletter and politely request the reader visit the sponsor.
Below are a list of some popular affiliate programs which over tens of thousands of different products you can feature on your site. Feel free to register with all of them and at your leisure, browse through the programs they offer. Make sure before you commit to a sponsor that they can be integrated within your site. Of course, you can also have a mall with a variety of products, but you have to find willing sponsors who want to compete with so many other business varieties and it must be done in a tasteful way. The key to selling anything is it must be something you believe in and trust. Be true to yourself and the goal of your site (not to mention your business plan).
Please note, Commission Junction, Reporting Net and LinkShare all have programs that cater to the US, Canada, UK and Europe.
A growing popular type of affilate program is that of a search engine. Now that many are converting to a pay per click from its advertisers, you can get a profit. Simply tie in a search engine to your page related to the topic of the search engine and you get paid by the click. Updated! is a good program. Webmasters Earn Cash With Update!
Now That You Know The Basics - The Work Begins!
HAVE A WEB SITE READY
Most affiliate programs will not even consider you unless you already have a web site set up. Be sure you have a developed web site with actual content first. You will most likely get rejected if your site is full of "Under Construction" or 404 error pages.
Content is your key in having people respond to whatever you offer. If you want to sell products related to fishing, have a site about fishing. If you want to sell gardening products, that should be your site's theme.
If you don't know how to create a web site, please click here. and you will find access to software to help you create a site, learn how to get a domain name, and where to find a place to put your site, as well as how to submit your site to search engines.
HOT AFFILIATE OPPORTUNITY
Google Adsense is a program for affiliates with content based web sites. There have been people who have made over $20,000 a month with this affiliate program. Although this is not something I put a lot of effort in, I make about $100/month with it.
How does it work? When you sign up, be sure your site is live and complete and you have a fair amount of traffic. Be sure your web site does not contain anything considered offensive such as pornography, gambling, smoking, drinking, hacking, or stealing anything with a copyright protection because this could be grounds to disqualify your application. Your site will also be disqualified if you have nothing but a banner farm, more than 3 ads on a page, are on a free site, or you use web site tricks for the search engines such as cloaking [masking multiple keywords in the text that matches your background so it cannot be seen] and keyword spamming [repeating the keywords so many times that it artificially inflates its ranking].
If you are approved, you can choose to put either a banner or text link for the ads and also have the option for the Google search engine. The ads produced by the Adsense program are based on the content pulled from your page. If your page is about cars, the Adsense ads will be car related. If your page is about food, the ads will be food related.
The reason behind it is anyone coming to view the information on your site is interested in that topic and will probably be more interested in more on that same subject. If they click on an ad, you get paid a percentage of the value of the click. It can quickly ad up if you have a site with good content.
Click the button below if you want to sign up with Google's Adsense today.
Once you have signed up for the Adsense program, click here to learn how to capitalize with AdSense!
SIGN UP FOR YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM
Go to one of the many affiliate programs around and fill out the applications. Some you can try include:
- Commission Junction
- LinkShare
- Be Free
- Release Technique Affiliate Program
- Kolimbo Affiliate Programs
- clickBank
- AffiliateWindow - UK/European Traffic only
- MagicButton.Net - UK/European Traffic only
- PanProfit - UK/European Traffic only
- TradeDoubler - UK/European Traffic only
- UKaffiliates - UK/European Traffic only
- YourCheque - UK/European Traffic only
MARKET IT
If the affiliate program you select is a single item plan such as Update! or The Release Technique, you don't have to take this step.
Once you have your foot in the door and are approved within the big affiliate programs such as Be Free, Commission Junction, Reporting Net, or Link Share, you can choose many different programs such as Avon, American Express, Columbia House, Dell, Disney Store and hundreds of other companies that match the content of your site.
These big affiliate networks act like a mediator between the clients who are looking for people to sell their products and the sales people who will be offering these products on their site. These big programs allow you to pick which company you would like to work with on your site. You merely click on a link to apply to that company's program and they may instantly approve you or may want to see your site first then decide if they want you to represent them.
Don't take it personally if you are rejected by some of these programs. Many times these businesses are looking for established sites that have a lot of traffic which newbies cannot prove yet. Other times you may have material they deem is incompatible with the image they which to associate with their company, especially if you have controversial topics on religion and politics. If you are rejected, just keep applying to other programs until you get a few you can work with.
Don't choose more programs than you can handle! It's tempting to play the odds game, but you will wear yourself thin trying to market each one. To be a successful affiliate does not mean merely putting up a banner or text ad and hope it will be seen. There is actually work to positioning it and marketing it and with too many links you will make mistakes. Start off with no more than 5 and then add on later.
For both big and single affiliate programs, this is the next step
Find some text links that you can incorporate within the text of your main content. If your page is about designing web sites, include a few links in the content about your affiliate program that deals with web design software, domain names, web hosting, or advertising on the Internet. Weave them in as if they are part of the information you are giving them for free. This will encourage those who have come to your site for information on that particular topic to click the link and you will let the advertiser worry about selling to them.
Banner ads can be effective if used properly. The key is matching the content with your site. If you want the most effective way to get clicks and sales, use only one sponsor per page. Choose only that sponsor for text and banner links to be used on that page. Do not advertise anything else on that page. As you weave text ads within your content, you can also add a top banner belonging to your sponsor and a bottom banner ad.
The logic for this design is the banner will be the first thing the visitor sees. They came for your content and not a sales pitch, but they will keep it in mind for a very short time whatever they saw in the first banner. Within the text, your visitor should be enthralled by your factual information and may start to notice a few of the sponsor links and how they relate to the content and may be tempted then to click on the link. If not, by the time they finish reading your article, you have the last banner belonging to the sponsor. You have mentioned it quite a few times already and there is nothing else to read on the topic, so why not give them one last opportunity to click on it.
When placing a banner ad, try to create an html break under the banner so you can put words to encourage your visitor to click. You can say, "Please click the banner and visit our sponsor". When you do this, you will increase your rate of clicks and the more clicks you have, the better chances you have to make a sale.
Another method is to create a page that is ONLY for the sponsor. Be sure to check with the rules of that advertiser before you do this. Some may not want you to stray from their approved content or have issues with trademark usage.
If the advertiser is okay with it, you need to do a bit of homework on the company and the products. If they have links to individual products, you may want to create a catalog page of a few of the products. Or you may want to tell people the benefit of the company. In other words, you are creating a page to sell the visitor on the idea of buying products from the company. Why should you do this?
Increased sales!!!
When you have sold someone on the idea to click on the links, chances are they are leaning towards being a customer. You have essentially weeded out the curious people to get the serious buyers. When you make the sales pitch on behalf of the company, you will find your click through rates may have decreased a bit, but the percentage of click throughs to buyers have increased. Why is this good? Because you could place links in a high traffic area and get clicks of curiosity seekers who are clicking because they are bored and if they are not "pre-qualified" buyers, they most likely will not buy. A pre-qualified buyer is one you have already prepped up to buying from the company before they get to the company page.
Using the basics of web design, create a page that is a sales pitch for that company using a nice balance of text and graphics which will link to the site. Place proper meta tags and keywords within your site to be picked up by search engines. Create doorway pages to have links to your site. Once that is in place, you are ready to advertise that page. Go to search engines, classified ads, and ffa sites to get listed. Consider pay per click search engines to insure you are at the top of a search engine search. For instance, if you represented company XYZ Beans, you could pay 30 cents for the keyword XYZ Beans so that anyone who entered the word XYZ Beans in the search engine would see your site at the top. As they entered those keywords, they are obviously looking to buy or find out more about XYZ Beans and if you are at the top they will most likely click on you first.
Just make sure before you do a pay per click keyword purchase that the company does not have a trademark issue. Some companies will not allow you to use the store's brand name in pay per clicks at all. Some will not even let you use it in your keyword meta tags. Others will let you use the brand name in pay per click as long as you do not out bid the main company. Check the rules first.
I would highly recommend you join the Release Technique Affiliate Program just so you can get your feet wet in the affiliate game. There is an affiliate help section that can walk you through basically any affiliate program. Sign up with Release Technique Affiliate Program today and you will have access to a wonderful affiliate training program that's free.
Generate extra income by joining the KowaBunga! affiliate program
Earn 20% of EVERY sale
Join the KowaBunga! affiliate program today and start promoting great products such as My Affiliate Program, Opt In Pro, AffiliateClicks and Team Affiliate. You can earn up to 20% commission on every sale you refer. Join Today!
Once you have your linking code you can choose from various marketing material such as text links, banners, hosted pages (like this one!) and more. Every cookie has an infinite lifespan and is able to track across multiple sites, eg. if you refer someone to MyAP and they end up buying Opt In Pro - you will still get rewarded.
Join Today!
- Earn up to 20% commission for every sale
- Earn up to 5% for every sale generated from a 2nd Tier website
- Gain access to affiliate training resources
- Add content and resources to your own site
- 24/7 access to real-time reports
You can be up and running within the hour! Just sign up to the program and then get immediate access to your admin area and grab your linking code. All the tracking is done automatically and we'll let you know when you've earned a commission.
Join Today!
