You have may have read many headlines that sound similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You have might have 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. You may have evaluated the information and come to the conclusion that it wasn’t valuable… no way can I make money doing that; I can’t promote that, do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL RUIN MY REPUTATION!
If you to it right, it can enhance your reputation. 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. Affiliate programs allow you to sell products and services without having to build or create them yourself. 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 that isn’t the end of the benefits. You also don’t have to create graphics and other marketing materials – those are all created for you by the affiliate program owner.
Another advantage is that you don’t have to manually keep track of ROI or conversion rates. Really good affiliate programs will provide you with affiliate management tools that are based on one of the top affiliate software programs. The software programs let you measure the effectiveness of the ads that you place on your site, and keep track of your earnings.
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. One school of thought is that affiliate programs that offer high percentage payouts are the best. 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 too bright to choose to promote affiliate programs and products for adult content movies on a site that is dedicated to toys for toddlers. 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 redirected to a page powered by a top-tier affiliate marketing software program, they are probably serious about their affiliate program. If you get an email that says ‘here is you affiliate link’ and ‘we’ll let you know if you earn anything’ you should think carefully about investing any time. 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 tell you who they are, give you contact information with phone numbers aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They are more likely to support you and deal with you fairly. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the affiliate site owner, chances are they are trustworthy. 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 affiliate program owner doesn’t put support systems in place – something like a ticket system or help desk software – then they probably won’t care about any problems that you might encounter marketing their product. If they do, then you can be rest assured that they are trying to delight their customers. If they AREN’T working to keep customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your reputation.
There 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/
