If your site is already getting traffic, why not turn it into a source of income? Affiliate programs are an excellent way to turn traffic into revenues. Joining an affiliate network effectively allows you to sell space on your website to advertisers without having to find the advertisers yourself. Advertisers simply outsource to their web advertising needs to an affiliate management company which, in turn, will deal with web publishers like you and me. Google AdSense allows publishers of all sizes to easily display relevant, unobtrusive Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money when visitors click on them. You may have already noticed the ubiquitous Google ads and search boxes on this site and others. The AdSense ads are less of a nuisance to visitors than the traditional flashing banners, and because they are targeted to the content of your site, they're much more likely to generate higher click-throughs than traditional banners. Google allows for numerous ad formats of various shapes and sizes. Experiment with different formats, backgrounds, text colors, and placements on your page to determine which ones work best on your site. Commission Junction (CJ) is a premier third-party affiliate program management firm. Its clients include eBay, Morgan Stanley, and USA Today, just to name a few. Signing up with CJ is simple and straightforward. As an affiliate, you apply for various third-party affiliate programs from within your account with just a few clicks. Most programs will accept you automatically; others may take a few days. Once accepted, you will be able to cut-and-paste html codes for the advertisers into your web pages. Most advertisers offer a wide selection of ad formats, including banner ads of various sizes, content links, text links, keyword links, and many others. With CJ's suite of powerful tracking and reporting capabilities, you can optimize your effort by targeting advertisers with the highest revenue potentials.Affiliate Programs
It's a no-brainer to place ads on your site and track your earnings because the coding and reporting are handled by the affiliate networks. The major affiliate programs offer a multitude of ad formats and display options to allow you to integrate sponsor ads tastefully into your site.
Google AdSense
When you add a Google search box to your site, you give your visitors the ability to perform a search without leaving your site. Better yet, Google displays in the search results paid advertisements which are targeted to your visitors' search queries, allowing you to make money when they click on those ads. AdSense is very easy to set up and incorporate into your web pages. Plus, the ad appearances are highly customizable, allowing for seamless integration into your site's color scheme.
If you're going to use AdWords to promote your site, then you'll probably want to subscribe to AdSense to help offset your AdWords expenditures. Sometimes, you can even make a profit (as this site does) from AdSense!
When subscribing to Google AdSense, be sure to read Google's guidelines and policies carefully so that you do not violate any of their policies. Google has advanced automated and manual systems to detect fraudulent activities. Even if you violate their policies inadvertently, you may lose your account, along with the time you've spent to incorporate AdSense codes into your web pages.
If you want to become an eBay affiliate, you'll need a Commission Junction account. Once you sign up with CJ, you'll be able to display affiliate text links and banners to eBay as well as post on your site real-time eBay listings targeted to your site's content. eBay will pay you up to $45.00 for each active registered user you send them, and up to $0.25 for each bid or Buy It Now transaction that is referred from your site.
Amazon Associate Programssociate Program
Amazon Associate Program allows you to make a commission of 5% or higher for sales originating from a link on your site. As you know, Amazon sells everything, not just books. For a $2000 watch sold through your site, for example, you would make $100 or more-- not bad for selling a watch without owning a jewelry store!
If your site is non-commercial and you don't want it to look like one, you can always sell books. Far from being a distraction, the book ads actually enhance both the content and prestige of your site.
Amazon offers advanced, yet easy to use, reporting tools to allow you to make the most of your efforts. Their link builder lets you quickly create ads in various formats, including banners of different sizes, search boxes, text links, recommended product links and more. The ads are customizable to fit into your site's format and color scheme.
There are scripts, such as Amazon Store Manager, available for you to build an entire Amazon storefront from which you'll earn commission on every sale. Your store might target a specific niche by offering only a single line of products, say DVD's. If you run a website on horror movies, for example, you might display DVD horror titles throughout the site and provide links to your Amazon DVD store that offers a wider selection of titles. In your store you would showcase horror titles to generate more sales. To see working examples of working Amazon storefronts, check out our Amazon DVD Store and Video Game Store.
If you're running a Amazon storefront, it's important (but not essential) to have a complementary website with real content to promote it. If you have a popular site on horror movies, for instance, people will want to support you by making their DVD purchases through your store. After all, they'll spend the same amount of money buying through your store as they would directly from Amazon.com.
While content is an effective way to promote an affiliate storefront, it's not the only way. We run Google AdWords campaigns to drive traffic to our Amazon stores. A potential drawback of this strategy is running up a huge AdWords bill and not being able to cover it with your Amazon commissions. It's easy to get lots of clicks from AdWords, but what you're really after is a high conversion rate (the rate at which the clicks translate into commissions). So, if you're going to use pay-per-click advertising to promote your store, choose your keywords wisely-- the more targeted your keywords are, the greater the conversion rate. For example, the generic keyword "DVD" may get you a lot of clicks to your DVD store, but it may not get you many sales. More targeted keywords such as "The Exorcist DVD" or "movies on DVD" are more likely to generate sales.
Another consideration for using pay-per-click to promote an affiliate store is the price range of the line of products you're selling. Higher priced products bring higher commissions but are perhaps harder to sell. A $20 DVD sale will bring you $1 in commission. If it took 20 clicks at 5 cents a click to get the sale, then you'd be just breaking even. A sale of car GPS system might earn you $50, but it will take a lot more clicks to make a single sale. Pay-per-click marketing is very much an art form; succeeding in it requires the right mix of knowledge, creativity, and trial-and-error.
