Make Money With Affiliate Programs
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David
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February 20th, 2012
Making money with affiliate programs is by far the easiest way to make money online with a shoe string budget. There is no inventory to order so you don't have that up front cost nor do you need to accept payments so there is no need for a payment processor.
People make 6 figures online just from promoting other people's products. A lady by the name of Rosalind Gardner wrote and e-book called The Super Affiliate Handbook. It's filled with about every single aspect of affiliate marketing that you could imagine.
How Affiliate Programs Work
Affiliate programs work by signing up with a website that offers a product that you'd like to promote. Many times you're accepted immediately but you'll find that certain companies require an approval.
Once you're approved for a merchants affiliate program you will receive a unique website address so that when someone clicks on it you receive credit for that click. At that point if the person you referred to the merchant buys something you are paid a percentage of that sale.
It's that easy, you don't need a shopping cart, you don't need to accept payments, you just refer you visitors to a product that you recommend and you have the opportunity to make money.
Finding Affiliate Programs
Finding affiliate programs is easy to do and it's free. If there's a popular product, service or software that you use take a look to see if they offer an affiliate program. You generally should search in the footer, the bottom, of a website. They'll generally have a link to a page with their affiliate program details.
One disadvantage to this is that if you sign up for a bunch of affiliate programs through various websites you'll need to visit each site to manage them. Plus is they have a payout minimum, meaning that they only pay you once you've reached a certain amount of sales you could have money sitting in an affiliate program that you can't access.
There is a way to get around this and manage all of your affiliate programs in one place. It's called an affiliate network.
Affiliate Program Networks
Affiliate networks work by offering 100's if not 1000's of affiliate programs in one place. This way you can manage your affiliate programs in one place. The benefits to this is that you save time plus your affiliate sales all add up in one place so it's easier to get to their payout threshold to get paid.
Some of the more popular affiliate networks are Commission Junction, LinkShare.com, ShareASale.com and ClickBank.com.
Just so you know, Commission Junction is the largest network of affiliate programs but many of the companies that you may want to promote may use a variety of other affiliate networks. You'll just need to read their affiliate details for who manages their affiliate program.
Unlike the other affiliate networks, ClickBank.com focuses mostly on downloadable products such as software and e-books.
One last thing about affiliate networks, the network requires that a merchant keep a minimum amount of money in their account so that they can pay affiliates. This ensures that you're going to get paid and is another reason to be cautious when selecting a merchant that has an in-house affiliate program rather than going through an affiliate network.
Your First Affiliate Program
I run an affiliate program with my website www.BBQFans.com through ShareASale so I invite you to setup an account and try it out with my product.
I pay 15% of each sale to you so it's definitely a great option for testing out your skills in affiliate marketing and making some money on the side. I'll tell you that the personalized branding irons sell well but they sell great during the Christmas and Father's Day seasons.
You can view more details by clicking here.
Additional Resources
As I mentioned above Rosalind Gardner wrote an e-book called The Super Affiliate Handbook that gets very detailed on affiliate marketing. You'll find on her website, copies of deposits in the are of $34,000+ per month.
I have personally read the book twice as a new version was released. I still have yet to obtain the $436,000 that she claims to have made in one year but I use her information daily even if it's not related to affiliate marketing.
Read more on How I Made $436,797 In One Year Selling Other People's Stuff Online. You'll be happy that you did.
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