I’ll bet you have probably read a lot of headlines that sound similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You have may have 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. And after finishing, you probably have thought to yourself, what a bunch of hooey… no way I can sell that; I can’t promote that, I can’t put that on my website… or whatever that! IT WILL WEAKEN MY ONLINE BRAND!
Well it doesn’t have to be that way. 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. When you promote affiliate websites, you get instant access to products and services that are well supported by professional marketing materials without and up-front development costs. 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 benefits don’t end there. You also don’t have to create graphics and other marketing materials - those are created for you by the affiliate program owner.
Another big benefit is that you really don’t have to keep track of finances or money. Most really good affiliate programs will provide you with affiliate management tools that are based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. Software programs like these provide a level of transparency that gives you confidence that your are being dealt with fairly.
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. One idea is that you should find affiliate offerings that offer high percentage payouts. My preference is to look for websites that offer high ticket items and pay large commissions. 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 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 automatically redirected to a page for affiliate marketing software program, they are probably serious about their 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 tell you who they are, give you contact information with phone numbers aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They aren’t likely to ‘forget’ to pay you the commissions that you have generated. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the affiliate site owner, chances are they can be trusted. 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 same criteria when evaluating affiliate website offerings. If the website owner doesn’t have a support system in place - something like a ticket system 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 delight their customers. 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 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/
