You have might have read a lot of 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. When you were done reading, you might have thought “There’s 15 minutes I’ll never get back”… that won’t work, that won’t make money, I won’t promote that, I can’t endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL MAKE ME LOOK SLEAZY!
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. 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 the advantages don’t end there. You also don’t have to create any marketing materials – those are all created for you by the person who builds the product and is running the affiliate program.
Another big benefit is that you really don’t have to keep track of finances or money. Really good affiliate programs will provide you with affiliate management tools that are based on one of the top affiliate software programs. The software will give you all kinds of measurements on how your ads are performing.
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 people think affiliate programs offering high percentage payouts are best. My preference is to look for affiliate program where you make a large commission from a referral. This affiliate program for promoting sales interview tools 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 chocolate desserts on a site that is dedicated to losing weight. 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, you can infer that this is a serious 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 aren’t likely to try to avoid paying you the commissions that you have earned. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the website owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to research them to find any complaints about them. 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. It would be wise to use similar criteria when evaluating affiliate 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 keep customers happy. If they AREN’T keeping customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your online brand.
There are a couple of affiliate programs that meet all these criteria, that I could 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/