I’ll bet you have read a lot of headlines that sound similar to this one above, or make claims like this one. You have probably even 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. After reading the article, you might have thought is was bunk… that won’t make money; I won’t promote that, I can’t do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL WEAKEN MY ONLINE BRAND!
That isn’t necessarily so. 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. As an affiliate marketer program, you get access to products and services that are well supported by professional marketing materials and you don’t have to pay for those materials. 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’s not all the benefits. You 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. These programs will help you optimize your marketing efforts so that you get the most out of the affiliate program.
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. Many people think affiliate offerings that offer high percentage payouts are better overall. 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 very effective 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 automatically redirected to a page for affiliate marketing software program, they are probably serious about their affiliate program. If they treat your membership in the affiliate program haphazardly, how do you think they treat their customers. 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. People who let you know who they are, give you contact information with phone numbers aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They are more likely to be on the up and up and deal with you fairly. If you can find a bio, picture, and phone number of the affiliate site owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to ‘Google’ them to find any negative information about 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 similar criteria when evaluating affiliate websites. If the vendor doesn’t have a support system in place – something like a help desk or help desk software – then they probably don’t care about their customers. When they do, you can be fairly confident that they are trying to keep customers satisfied. If they AREN’T keeping customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your image.
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/
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