By Tara Grant
If you run a website with traffic, you can make money by having links to
merchants' online stores on your site. When someone goes through your links
into the store of a merchant, and makes a purchase, you earn commission from
the sale. Some merchants also pay for leads or clicks.
Affiliate marketers every where are cashing in on the huge amounts of money
to be made with affiliate marketing. Even if you do not have a website you
can utilize becoming an affiliate of any given company. Of course if you
have a website, you will be able to optimize your website for maximum search
engine placement, in return you will see a huge increase in affiliate
income.
How do I find the best affiliate programs?
To start off with, if you are going to run affiliate programs on a website,
you should look for programs that are similar to your website content. Your
visitors are at your website looking for something specific, so you should
make sure that any program you are promoting is going to be of interest to
your visitors.
Example: If you run a pet related website, you want to seek pet related
affiliate programs to maximize your marketing efforts. Selecting programs
that offer pet products or pet services that your visitors would be
interested in. Adding affiliate programs such as long distance calling cards
or credit cards will not perform as well as a pet training book or pet
clothing would. Why? Because your site traffic is looking for pet info in
particular, therefore you need to run affiliates that offer something those
visitors would be interested in.
What do I look for when selecting an affiliate program?
The first and most important thing to look for is the products or services.
There is no need to join a program that you will never run or a program that
offers bad services. A great starting point is to look for affiliate
networks. These are great especially if you plan on running more than one
website. Affiliate networks typically offer several different programs a
webmaster may join. Most let you see a directory of the merchants in the
network before you join. Commission Junctions, Link Share, and Click Bank
are 3 large affiliate networks that offer several merchants.
Second, you need to look at the commission rate to determine if it is even
worth your time. In addition to the commission rate, pay close attention to
the dollar amount that you'll get per sale or action. For example, 20%
commission on a $100 product is $20, while 50% commission on a $5 product is
only $2.50. So, knowing what you will be given in exchange will make
selecting much easier!
Does the company offer tracking?
Being able to check your stats are very important. Most legit affiliate
programs will allow a webmaster to view stats at any given time. being able
to view your stats will allow you to see what ad's are performing the best
and what ad's are not performing. You will also be able to view your click
thru's and sales with affiliate tracking.
Being able to track your stats will allow you to work the programs that are
doing the best and help you decide what programs to stop running, so you can
focus on the ones that are making the most!
Where do I place affiliate links on my website for the best results?
For the last 7 years of affiliate marketing I have found that placing ads
above the fold of my websites perform very well and also in my content.
Google AdSense is a great program to run in content, as google will deliver
related ads. I always place Google ads to the left of any article or content
and also 1-2 paragraphs down. This technique has worked very well for me.
These several questions will help you a great deal when searching for
affiliates to deal with. Once you have mastered seeking the right affiliates
you can begin working them into your website!
Author Bio: Design By Tara is a full service website design & website
development company. Design By Tara can help you establish your presence
online with style and keep your customers coming back! Visit
http://www.designbytara.com for all of your web needs!
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