Make Money While You Sleep, All Year Round
Written by admin on May 28th, 2009 in Internet Marketing.
You have may have read many headlines similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You have might have 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. However, when you were done with the article, you might have thought YOU couldn’t do it… that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard… or whatever that! IT WILL RUIN MY BRAND!
Done well, it can enhance your image. 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. As an affiliate marketer program, you get access to products and services that are well supported by professional marketing materials and you don’t have to pay for those materials. 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 there are more benefits than that. You also don’t have to create graphical marketing materials – those are all created for you by the affiliate program owner.
Another big benefit is that you really don’t have to manually keep track of ROI or conversion rates. Most really good affiliate programs will provide you with affiliate management tools that are based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. The software will give you all kinds of measurements on how your ads are performing.
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 school of thought is that you should find affiliate programs that offer high percentage payouts. I would prefer to find affiliate program that sell high ticket items and pay large commissions. This affiliate program for promoting SEO services gives you the opportunity to earn monthly recurring income up to $350.
- 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 in an affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious 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 let you know who give you contact information with phone numbers are more likely to treat you well. They are more likely to pay you on time and deal with you fairly. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the affiliate site owner, chances are they are trustworthy. You will also be able to search the Internet to find any complaints about them or 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 affiliate program owner doesn’t have a support system in place – something like a ticket system or help desk software – then they probably won’t care about any problems that you might have. If they do, then you can be fairly sure that they are trying to keep customers happy. If they AREN’T trying to keep customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your online brand.
There are a couple of affiliate programs that meet the important criteria, 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/