How to Make Money on Your Website - Using Affiliate Programs
Business Ideas, Online BusinessesSmall Online Business Idea: Making money with your high traffic and/or high reputation website using Affiliate Programs.
(The rest of this post assumes you’ve already got one or many high traffic/high quality websites. If you haven’t finished step 1 yet, go here for information on how to build a high traffic website.)
Getting Money from Affiliate Programs & Your Website - Basics:
Affiliate programs are basically the same concept as lead-generation, a sales person, or a “middleman”. In short, you neither close the sale nor create the product. The only value you need to provide is to connect a prospective buyer to someone else’s store. With the right kind of website, this can be an easy addition to your content that pays dividends for little extra work.
How it Works:
Large numbers of suppliers and internet retailers (who are trying to sell more stuff) realize that, even if they pay you a percentage of the cost of an item they’ve got stocked, its still in their best interest to make the sale and pay you a sales commission. So, even if they pay you $10 on a $100 camera sale, they still get $90, which is still a good deal for them.
In order to organize this demand, large “affiliate programs” have been set up to accommodate the sale of just about any item imaginable. As a result, its quite easy to offer products for sale on your website that your visitors may be interested in buying. Once you’ve hooked up with one or several affiliate programs, which is pretty easy to get going, you simply sit back and hope that some of your website’s visitors feel like buying.
Dangers:
Any time you send a visitor away from your website, you may never see them again. So, only get involved in an affiliate program if the overall impact on your site and revenue is positive.
Also, by promoting other companies’ products, you are endorsing items which may or may not match your own quality standards. If you promote crappy content and your visitors have a bad experience with them (or if they simply see you endorsing them), their opinion of your site may weaken and that may be that last that you see of them.
Important Partners:
In your search for an affiliate program that offers ease of use, products that fit your website, and a payment model that maximizes profits, consider some of the partners below. For quickly introducing yourself to the principles and common issues surrounding affiliate programs, play around with the Amazon Associates program first and then consider moving on to the other programs.
