 Making Big Bucks with Free Affiliate Programs
Convert Your Blog or Website Into Cold Hard Cash
Bloggers and webmasters are making money every day with affiliate marketing programs.
There’s hidden wealth in your blog. It's easy and it's FREE to become an affiliate! Do you want to make money on the net, but don't know where to start? The solution: get your own FREE affiliate account and make as much as $100 a day, with NO effort and ZERO cost.
 The Sale is in the Details
Do you have a website or a blog you’d like to turn into a money-making machine? Affiliate programs are a proven way of making money. You can make money by promoting the web’s best products on your website or blog. As the web content publisher, are you interested in setting up a beneficial partnership with internet merchants? Perhaps you’re familiar with PPC advertising, which pays you, the publisher, for each click that takes a visitor from your web page to the advertiser’s website. It’s different with affiliate programs.The programs are usually designed to Pay Per Action, PPA. The program pays you a commission for every sale that the visitor makes, or for every new visitor who signs up for a promotion.
For example, Surfer Sam is an Amazon affiliate. The visitor who clicks on our Amazon ad will pay no more for their purchases at Amazon, but Surfer Sam receives a small commission from Amazon for sending the customer. Most of the major web sites, like Amazon and eBay, have set up affiliate programs to develop traffic to their sites.
Make Money Promoting the Web’s Best Products
That’s right, you don’t have to have your own products to succeed online. Affiliates earn a good income selling other people’s products or services. An affiliate is simply an individual or business that signs up to promote someone else’s product or service in exchange for a share of the profits. Affiliation has advantages for you. There’s no product development to delay you. There’s no need to write sales copy. The sales materials are already written for you. As an affiliate you don’t need a merchant account, and you don’t have to process orders, handle shipping and customer service. The merchant companies themselves take care of all these functions.
Running an Affiliate Program
Some merchants run their own affiliate programs in house, while others outsource their affiliate program management by using the third party services. These intermediaries are called affiliate networks. The merchant or company who offers an affiliate program, either on its own or through an affiliate service, will pay only for actions that it defines. First, it will create an ad and define the action that it wants users to perform when they visit the site, such as signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product. Then the merchant will set the amount that it is willing to pay when this action is completed. Finally, it will install conversion tracking code on its website to verify when an action has been completed.
What is an affiliate network service?
An easy way to find an affiliate program for your website is to get acquainted with some of the major affiliate networks, like Commission Junction, LinkShare, FusionQuest or Affiliate Tracking Network. These services act as matchmakers so that companies and would-be-affiliates can find each other. The service will also track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates, what the visitors buy, as well as accounting for commissions the affiliates earn. For this, the affiliate services charge the merchant company a fee of from 10% to 30% of the commissions paid, plus a one-time set-up fee. They also require a monthly minimum charge from the company. The merchant pays. You, the affiliate, earn.
The Big 4 Affiliate Networks
Commission Junction. Probably the most popular affiliate network, Commission Junction, CJ, is also the largest. Finding and joining an appropriate affiliate program at Commission Junction is easy. CJ also makes things easy for affiliates by consolidating all payouts into one check. CJ is owned by ValueClick, which merged with Be Free. With about 500,000 affiliates, Commission Junction is probably the largest affiliate service. About 50% of the Internet’s top 300 merchants work with Commission Junction. Yahoo has included the Commission Junction affiliate system with its Merchant Solutions e-commerce stores.
LinkShare. LinkShare has more than 600 merchants in its affiliate network. Choose from categories such as books, music, flowers, fashion, computers, etc. You'll find some big name companies here, including Dell, Nordstrom, Target, Disney and American Express.
ClickBank. ClickBank is now used by over 10,000 web businesses and 100,000 affiliates to deliver their products and services instantly over the Internet. It offers a huge array of downloadable products, primarily ebooks and software. Because it is inexpensive and easy for merchants to join, the quality of the products provided varies enormously, from very good to downright awful. It's a popular place to search for overlooked niches.
Performics. This is a very professional site with some well known brands. Performics' clients include America Online, Blair Corp., Bose, CompUSA, Eddie Bauer, HP Shopping, Kohl's, L.L.Bean, PC Connection, RedEnvelope, Verizon Wireless, and more than 200 others. Performics is owned by DoubleClick.
Setting Up the Affiliate Sales Campaign
After you’ve chosen an affiliate program and company to work with, you sign up and receive a unique affiliate ID. The service will provide a snip of HTML code, which includes your ID, to paste into your web page. An advertising image will appear on your page, and the visitor who clicks it will be taken to the merchant company site. A cookie for the visitor will include your affiliate ID to identify you. If you hover your mouse over an ad, you can read in the status bar the name of the affiliate service in use. The successful affiliates also write ad copy about the products they're promoting. It is their personal endorsement that confirms the buyer's decision to purchase.
Coupon and Discount Sites
Interesting examples of affiliate programs are the coupon and discount web sites. They sign up with merchants as affiliates, promote discounts to visitors who enter their site, and still get a commission when a sale is made. Some companies will provide special price reductions on a few items to their affiliates, so their affiliates can afford to offer coupons and discounts.
Take the Next Step
Joining affiliate programs requires effort to be successful. It is written that 5% of the affiliates earn 90% of the commissions. As part of your strategy, you’ll want to join many affiliate programs and promote them heavily. It is important to keep learning and exploring. Experiment with different ways to monetize your website or blog. You don’t know what will work until you try it.
I hope life brings you much success. I wish you a very happy day.
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