The good samaritan affiliate marketer

While the number one priority for any affiliate marketer should be making money, there are ways of combining this with being in aid of others, giving you that good, warm and fuzzy feeling.

Charity

The most obvious way of giving something back is by charity. You can either set aside a portion of your revenue to a charity of your choice, thus giving more and more the more successful you get, or you can find an affiliate program, itself giving a part of its proceeds to charity. Combining them both will, of course, double your efforts and make that warm, fuzzy feeling last even longer.

Promoting the right affiliate program

When promoting an affiliate program, you can make sure the companies involved in all aspects of the process (such as manufacturers and transportation) all are conducting their business in an ethical manor, avoiding products manufactured by the use of child labor or other inhuman work environments.

In a similar way, you can try to look at the environmental aspects of the business; even though all physical products sold over the internet will be shipped, thus contributing to global warming, finding affiliate programs selling products manufactured nearby will make the transportation go only one way.

The list of things possible to look closer at grows long, you can easily spend an eternity trying to find the perfect affiliate program to promote. Try to focus on the things you feel are most important, at least you are doing something.

Helpful websites

Another way of being helpful to others is to present them with useful information about serious issues in their lives. Even though most successful websites are helpful to their audience (otherwise they wouldn’t be successful, right?), some topics may help people with far more important issues than others.

Making a helpful website about serious issues (such as diseases or similar) isn’t something to take lightly, but if you do your job you might end up helping more people than you could imagine.

Of course, there are many less serious issues that still pose as huge problems for people. Look at the huge problem with over weight; this is clearly a way to combine helping people with the possibility of making money using weight loss affiliate programs. If weight loss isn’t your niche, there are many many more niches you can try.

Hair loss is, while not a life threatening disease, a big problem for many men. Similarly the recent boom in alternative health has given affiliate marketers a few herbal alternatives to promoting diet pills and traditional health products.

Honesty

No matter how you choose to go about with your website and your affiliate programs, the single most important factor is honesty. If you say you are giving part of the proceeds to charity - make sure you do. If you are giving people weight or hair loss tips – make sure you actually help people.

There are far too many websites exploiting peoples weight issues or similar, only trying to make as much money as possible. Do not forget the fact that if people are following your advice, you have a moral obligation to actually give them correct and useful information.

Affiliates, think of your pension

For people working with affiliate marketing, it is important to remember putting money aside. There will be a time when you no longer wish to work with affiliate programs – either due to old age and retirement, or due to some other reason. When that day comes, those who have put money aside will find themselves smiling all the way to the bank, while those who have nothing saved will have to make a living some other way.

For many, affiliate marketing is a way to be your own boss, instead of working nine to five for someone else. Just as you are in charge over your time, work and money, you will have to look at your potential pension and savings. There day when you no longer wish – or can – work with affiliate marketing will be sure to come. The question is: When?

In many countries, people who work full time have a pension plan already. Often it is the government making the decision for you, in other cases it’s the company in question. For these people, thinking and planning for your pension may seem odd when in your thirties, but for people not automatically included, it is highly important.

Some people work full time and use affiliate programs only to make some extra money, while others work only with affiliate marketing to make their living. People having a day job will often be part of a pension plan, but would be wise to save some of the affiliate commission for the retirement.

Depending on where you live, there are many possible ways of saving for your pension. If you have an interest in the stock market and investing, perhaps you can set up your own, private pension fund. If not, the companies willing to aid you are numerous. Just make sure you look at all the options.

The key factor is to start saving early. The impact of interest over time is greater than most people imagine, getting a head start will make your pension so much easier to live on when the time comes.

People working with stocks, bonds and other kinds of investments would tell you that the average rise in stock indexes is 7 percent a year. Of course this isn’t necessarily true each year, but over time this is what one should expect.

To calculate how much your savings will grow, an easy rule of thumb is that the money invested will double in 10 years. Invest a thousand dollars today, have two thousand for your pension – if you retire in ten years that is.

When saving money on a regular basis – most often a monthly deposit – you will see your money grow to a very nice amount over the years. Saving $100 every month will end you up with;

After 10 years, you will have over $17.000 saved for your pension

After 20 years, you will see yourself with over $50.000

After 30 years you will have saved up the nice amount of $117.000, not bad at all.

No matter how you do it, saving for your pension is essential if you are working solely with affiliate marketing. The sooner you start, the better.

Residual commission

When joining an affiliate program, one should always look for a residual commission model, simply because the enormous potential in recruiting potential long term customers for the affiliate program. Many affiliate programs offer residual – sometimes named recurring commission – but not all are of the same nature, and sometimes the term residual is flat out misleading.

What does residual commission mean?

When referring a new customer to a pay per sale affiliate program, you will always get a commission on that sale, should it occur within the set period of time (length of cookie). With a residual commission, you will earn a commission not only on the first sale, but on all future purchases of that person. The referred customer will – in a matter of speaking – be yours; earning you commissions every time he revisits the affiliate site and buys something else.

Full vs. Limited residual commission

Some affiliate programs claming to offer residual commission will decrease the commission earned, limit the products eligible for commission or limiting the period of time the customers stays yours.

When facing a program like this, you need to look at the details of the program to see if they are really offering residual commission, or if they are using the term only to recruit more affiliates. If you decide on the latter, find another affiliate program - without limitations or lower residual commission - to join.

Potentials of residual commission

Clearly, the possibility to make a commission on future sales will make the overall revenue on each referred customer larger, but how much more can one make with a residual model?

Research shows that a surprisingly low percentage of online customers will return to make additional purchases from the same website. The reasons for this are unclear, but theories imply its in part because of the wide variety of online stores – making it easy to find a new web shop offering a lower price on the next item to be bought – and part because of the many dissatisfied customers of online shopping sites with little or no customer care.

Taking this in mind, the chance of one particular customer returning to an un-named web shop might seem slim, but if you choose your affiliate program carefully, you’ll see the statistics are lying – There are ways of greatly improving the chance of referring customers who will return again and again.

To fully take advantage of the residual commission model is to find an affiliate program of an extremely high quality. If you can find a well known brand in your niche, offering residual commission, you are one giant step closer to making some serious money.

Choosing a smaller alternative – perhaps with a higher commission – may prove wise when dealing with regular pay per sale programs, but if you are hoping for your referrals to return for some more shopping, you better be damn sure the site you are sending them to is of good quality. There are a few important things to consider when deciding on an affiliate program:

Overall look and feel of the website

If the website you refer visitors to – hoping to convert them into returning customers – looks shady, poorly designed or very slow loading, this will make the potential customer think twice. If they can’t afford a decent website, how much of a company is there behind the page?

Navigation

Is it easy to navigate on the website? Are you likely to find what you are looking for, or are you bound to grow tired of it all and search google for an alternative shop?

A wide range of products

If the affiliate program only sells a few different products, the chances of someone needing more than one of course decreases, be sure to find a program with a wide range of products.

Price

The prices on all merchandise is important, if they aren’t competitive, people will rarely – if ever – return for a second try.

When you have researched all your potential affiliate programs - offering residual commission - you should have a clear view of which ones will be more likely to attract their customers for a second, third and fourth time.

Affiliate programs instead of Adsense

When using contextual ads – such as Google Adsense – one of the problems you are facing, is the obvious way the ads are displayed. It is no secret people try to stay clear from advertisements, and if given a choice, most would rather click a random link instead of an obvious ad.

If you use text links from various affiliate programs instead of Adsense, you will have a much greater chance of having people clicking your links, instead of just glancing at them seeing nothing but the "Ads by Google" under the ads.

Using affiliate programs correctly will give you several ways of increasing your revenue, it’s not just the placement and style of the ad;

Banners or text links

Although nearly all contextual adverting allows you to choose between banners and various forms of text links, using the banner option leaves you with no way of ensuring the design and colors of the banner won’t mess up your site. With a static banner from an affiliate program, you know how it looks – No surprises here. Combining banners and text links are much easier when you are deciding exactly what to put on your pages, not a script.

Tempting anchor

With Adsense, you are relying on the advertisers to figure out catchy and well converting anchor texts for their ads. Much in the same way, you can’t do much about typos, grammar or bad language. Although there are filters of various types – i.e. adult language and content – advertisers who try hard enough have little or no problems getting by many of these filters.

Number of affiliate links

The predetermined ad blocks do not always fit your web design and the same applies to the number of links. Working with affiliate programs, it is up to you how many links you add to your pages, making both the design and readability of the ads far better than a ready made website template ever will.

Contextual simplicity

One thing most contextual advertising have in common is the simplicity. It doesn’t matter if you are an advertiser or a publisher; the quick and easy ways of implementing the ads often makes it easier to choose Adsense than it is to use an affiliate program. On very large sites, contextual advertising serves a purpose as part of the advertising – especially on pages with limited traffic. But, on pages with large quantities of traffic, choosing one or a few well converting affiliate programs will be worth the effort.

Size of commission

The main upside of affiliate programs is the commission. The commission is generally higher than contextual ads, but the most important thing is; you know what you get paid. Adsense – and most other contextual advertising – relies on advertisers bidding for keywords, thus making it hard – not to say impossible - to predict the revenue. With affiliate programs, you are offered a predetermined commission per sale, lead or click, making it easier to calculate your earnings. On the other hand, people researching Adsense keywords and their estimated CPC can make you a fortune if doing it right. But, for the rest of us, affiliate programs will be the more lucrative choice. If you just have the time and patience.

Online dating – A lucrative business for affiliate marketers

If you are using online dating sites to meet new people, you could easily make quite a bit of money using the information gathered. Making a blog – or website – about dating, is one of the most lucrative niches available for an affiliate marketer. Use your knowledge.

Most people who are using the Internet to meet new people know have much information about the dating industry. This information is useful for pretty much anyone curious of meeting someone online, but without any experience.

Just as in other competitive niches, most keywords are very hard to target, simply because of the many sites targeting the same words and phrases. But, similarly, the variations of search terms are many, making it more than possible to make a small profitable blog or site about dating.

If you - like most online daters – have tried multiple communities and dating portals, you have a great chance of reviewing them, grading them and give detailed information about all dating sites you have tried. Even though this is not nearly the potential of a dating site, it can be sufficient for making quite a bit of money.

In order to utilize your knowledge, you need to map out your site or blog, trying to figure out what sections to cover, and what keywords to target for each section. Using a keyword tool – such as Overture or similar – will make this a very easy task. Some of these tools can be bought for a short amount of time, making it very cost efficient if you are only researching for a few search terms.

One important thing to consider before actually building your site is NOT to limit your website. If you are successful in targeting the right phrases, and traffic are flooding, an easy-to-expand website will be a lifesaver. Once you get the ball rolling, you do not want to spend more time re-building your site’s structure just because you didn’t think things thru before you launched it. The task of re-building something often takes even longer than the initial work building it.

The dating sites you are familiar with probably offers affiliate programs, most of them do. But if you can’t seem to find programs good enough, try a few other dating sites out. When looking for dating sites to promote, you should look at both the quality of the affiliate program and – of course – the over all quality of the sites. As usual, sending visitors to any affiliate program with overpriced products won’t do you any good, try to find a dating community you, your self, would consider.

After building your site, adding the affiliate banners and links, it’s time to promote it. This is no easy task, but with a little imagination it should pose little or no problem. As this is a very lucrative and competitive niche, finding sites of similar nature to exchange relevant links with, should be easy. Be sure not to place links to direct competitors on important pages, as this might send potential commission elsewhere.

The nature of online communities – dating or other – makes most people used to writing fairly much text. This is a great advantage both when you build your site and when you are trying to promote it. There is nothing as effective as the written word when promoting websites. Very few websites will get big relying only on word of mouth. Use your writing skills to make an interesting site, on target reviews and – more important – to write articles and/or press releases appealing to potential visitors.

Advertising a poker affiliate program offline

Many poker affiliate programs offer the opportunity to promote their services offline with the use of fliers and such. If you move in the right crowd, promoting a poker room this way can earn you quite a bit of money.

Even though poker attracts people from all ages, the typical online player is a young male. If you are a student, in the military or involved in a team-sport, you are surrounded by potential poker players. Most probably, a few of them are already involved in online gambling, but if you handle your cards right, you can make them join a new one, thus making you a commission when they play.

If you have a lot of friends somewhat interested in poker, why not suggest a weekly game? But, instead of meeting at someone’s house, find an online poker room offering private tables and/or private tournaments.

Many will object to the idea, stating it’s not the same thing. They are right, it’s not, but there are upsides you should point out;

You do not need to shuffle the cards.

After a night of poker, quite a bit of time has been spent just waiting for the cards to be dealt. Online poker doesn’t require shuffling, and the process of dealing the cards are done in a fast manner.

No more discussion of rules

In many home games, there are added rules. For people not used to them, they can be very surprising and sometimes extremely costly. With an online poker room, standard rules apply, and there is no room for discussion.

Much more poker

When attending a home game, it’s not rare people get drunk, or are more interested in talking about Bob’s new boyfriend, than playing cards. When you are there to play, this can be annoying to say the least.

Invite whomever you want

Home games are limited to the room you are playing in, the amount of tables etc. Online, you can virtually be any number of players, while most home games tend to max out at 10 players or so. If some of the regular players isn’t housebroken, playing online takes away the problem of explaining to your wife/husband why there’s beer and chips everywhere, including the children’s room and in the shower.

Long lost friends can join.

If you had a game with your college friends, why not email them and invite them as well? Playing online makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to join your game.

If you are inviting your friends to play poker online, you might want to share the rewards with them. Nothing can break a friendship faster than someone cheating the other. Telling them about your plans or sharing the reward eliminates this risk. If you are actively promoting the poker room to colleagues, classmates or acquaintances is a whole other story, that’s about actually making money.

Due to the high competition of online poker, you stand a very good chance of finding an affiliate program offering good incentives for players (i.e. high sign up bonus, rake-back or such) and good commission for recruiting new players. Depending on who you plan to invite to the poker room, you should check out the special features available. Many poker rooms offer private tables and tournaments among other things.

Just inviting your friends can make you quite a bit of money, if you manage to actually promote it to a wider audience; you stand a chance of making a small fortune.

Make some money loosing weight

If you are one of many struggling with a few extra pounds, and are constantly trying new diets, exercises or training equipment, you have an excellent opportunity to get some of your spent money back, if you only make a small blog or website about the issue.

If you do a simple search on weight loss, GI-method, diet or any other weight loss related term, you will find yourself with more results than you can imagine. The only reason so many webmasters are competing for the same search term, is the enormous upside in that particular niche. Many of the webmasters competing have little insight in the actual topic, but are very good at search engine marketing and/or SEO.

If you have tried at least one popular diet, you can easily write down your experiences and your success – or lack thereof – using that diet, exercise or equipment. For others in your position, this information can prove very valuable, saving them time or money. If you can find products or services to promote - using online affiliate programs – you can get a commission every time you refer a customer their way. If you have tried numerous ways of loosing weight, why not write separate pages – or even different websites – covering all the methods you’ve tried.

A blog is the easiest way to go, but a website is easier to make profitable once established. If you have no, or limited computer skills, a blog would be a good start. For those of you with experience in HTML or any wysiwyg-editor should focus on making an easy website.

Although blogs can be very lucrative, a real website will often be more trustworthy, simply because it’s obvious someone has put some effort into it. The fact that a website can be made in just a few minutes is often – if not always – forgotten.

It’s possible to download some free blog software, to install on a domain you own. This is a great way for beginners; no HTML or coding needed, but you still reside on your own domain. When your website is successful enough, you can redesign it without having to move it from one URL to another. If you had your blog hosted somewhere else - on blogspot.com or such – you would have to hope people would follow the link to your new domain.

Finding affiliate programs related to weight loss is easy, the hard part is to choose the right one. A good idea is to use a few programs, evaluating the commission earned periodically.

The very nature of overweight makes it very likely for people to keep trying to loose weight, making recurring commission very important when choosing affiliate program. If you can recruit a few new customers, you could make a very nice commission if some of them stay true to the program over a period of time. If a method of weight loss is effective, chances are good many customers will stay loyal, thus making you even more money.

Figuring out what keyword to target may be tough for people inexperienced in affiliate marketing, but if you write good and unique content, visitors AND search engines will find you sooner or later. On top of naturally generated visitors, there are many ways of attracting visitors and/or improving your search engine placement. Generally this is much easier with a website than it is with a blog, but many marketers are using nothing but blogs to earn online revenue, so it’s not impossible at all.

The bigger your website gets, the more exposure you will get in the search engines, thus increasing your chances of getting visitors thereby. Try to find one or two keywords or phrases to target for each section of your site, and be sure to use that phrase in the internal links to that page. Even without proper research, you stand a good chance of targeting at least one term possible to reach a top placement for. Once you are making a little bit of money, it’s motivating enough to expand your marketing efforts to truly make an online income.

Avoid fraudulent affiliate programs by being careful

One of the worst scenarios for an affiliate marketer is to send visitors to an affiliate program, just to notice you don’t get paid. As in any lucrative business, there will always be dubious characters trying to earn money cheating others, but the easy anonymity online makes the frequency of fraudsters seems larger than in the off line world.

If you rely on only a few affiliate programs, the outcome of just one fraudulent program can be disastrous. While most affiliate programs are honest, the rotten eggs are spoiling it for everyone. If you have a website in a competitive niche, the risk of finding bad programs is higher.

If you look in any poorly maintained affiliate program directory, you will notice tons of dead links or links to sites without affiliate programs. It’s safe to assume these links once pointed to affiliate programs, now long gone. Although poorly maintained, any affiliate program directory would find a dead link at some time, making it probable many links die on a daily or weekly basis. The reason for this is most often one out of two;

Plain fraud

Someone starts a website, buys affiliate program software, sets it up and promote it heavily. Once commission is owed, they either stall or accuse every affiliate of cheating, terminating the account, effectively avoiding to pay commission. This can go on for a surprising long time, before to many angry webmasters alert authorities and the affiliate program and website is closed. Most often it’s hard to find the people responsible for it, so they are free to do it once again, this time with a new domain.

Black hat SEO

Many SEO guides tell you one of the best ways of getting inbound links is by the use of an affiliate program. As more and more webmasters turns into affiliates, the more links the place, all pointing to you. This is true (if you use the right network or software), but many of these – so called – affiliate programs disappear as soon as the amount of affiliates are enough. The commission owed will often be paid in full, but they rarely give you good notice of the program shutting down. They are hoping for many affiliates not noticing the termination of the program, continuing to send visitors, but this time for free. Even when webmasters notice it, they often forget links on pages rarely visited, thus leaving good links, increasing the former affiliate programs link popularity for a long time after the program is gone.

Knowing what programs to join, and which to stay clear of is hard, but it’s possible to limit the risk;

Look at the pagerank

While pagerank isn’t everything, it most certainly is a good indicator of a serious webpage. A new domain is without pagerank, as are domain found cheating google. Staying clear of affiliate programs without PR eliminates much of the risk.

Try to find a good affiliate program directory

Whether it’s Affiliate Ranker or any other directory, finding your favorite site is essential. Most affiliate directories are working hard on sorting out the bad seeds, and they often have a bunch of webmasters voluntarily reporting fraudulent activities. If they are serious about their directory, the amount of fraudsters should be minimal.

Don’t put all eggs in the same basket

If you can, try to find a few affiliate programs instead of one. That way, if one turns out to be cheating, you will still have most of your earnings with other – hopefully honest – affiliate programs.

New to affiliate marketing? Start out light

Most new webmasters look at the most profitable online niches, instead of focusing on what they already have a deeper knowledge in. Most people have plenty of interests, hobbies or are book-smart enough to build a small, yet profitable site built with affiliate programs, targeting that particular area. A small, non-competitive niche is exactly what the new affiliate marketer needs. The experienced derived from this first site, can prove valuable when trying to target a more competitive niche.

Just as the Internet has brought the information closer to people, it has made every bit of information likely to have readers. No matter how obscure the topic, people will always try to find interesting information. Many sports make for excellent sites, if you are a big fan of a soccer- or football team; why not make a blog about it? If the team is large enough – and you target clever keywords – you will have visitors reading your text, and hopefully clicking an ad or two. Some of the most visited web pages about sports are just blogs, and most of them do very well using affiliate programs to make money online.

The same applies to most sports; Golf, hockey, cricket or even bowling can be a good topic for a site, just make sure to evaluate the competition for each intended keyword before you start, as these are very popular sports, thus making the topic and keywords more popular online as well.

If you have more specific hobbies - such as woodworking, jewelry, pottery or any other craft – the competition are not nearly as hard, but the amount of potential visitors may be lower. No matter what niche you are targeting, make sure there are ways of monetizing your site. There are many different ways, but the most common ones are affiliate programs or contextual advertising.

If you are targeting a very small niche, contextual advertising will be likely to bring you only a small amount for each click, due to the lack of bidding for those keywords. Similarly, this can work FOR you if you are bidding for visitors using contextual ads. Finding an affiliate program in small niches may or may not be hard, but if you find a good one, you will almost always make more with a traditional program, than you would with contextual advertising.

With affiliate programs, you are able to present your visitors with products you decide fitting for them, with contextual ads, the script does this for you. While this is (or should be) highly relevant ads, you still lack the control over the specific ads. With sites in small niches – or with low amount of traffic – the importance of higher commissions are necessary to keep the site profitable. Getting only a few cents per click will not cut it if you only have a few visitors per day, but if you can present them all with a product they want, you can make quite a bit of money.

It’s up to you to decide what products are likely to be of interest to your viewers, but don’t be afraid to experiment. Try new or additional affiliate programs or try some contextual ads once you have some traffic. Find out what suits your site best; every site – and every niche – is unique.

Use Your Website To Pre-Sell Your Affiliate Programs

Most experienced affiliate marketers will tell you that one of the most important factors of online marketing is pre-selling the products promoted. Pre-selling can be difficult at first, but if you choose your affiliate programs wisely, you can have your site pre-sell the products for you.

If you have a site of your own, you are probably using quite a few services to maintain it. This includes hosting, domain registration and other day-to-day services needed to operate a website. Due to the high competition in these areas, most of the sites offering these services will also run an affiliate program to find new customers.

This is an excellent opportunity to use these affiliate programs, promoting them on selected pages on your site. More visitors than you might think will look around your site, perhaps looking for something not expected.

When I build a new site in a niche I haven’t tried before, I always try to do a little research as to the competition. Many times I get ideas from the sites I find; if they are successful I would be foolish not to use what apparently works.

Different people are looking for different things. I for one am writing for Affiliate Ranker, so I tend to find new affiliate programs this way and I suspect others like me do as well. If you are promoting a 2-tier program, this can be a nice addition to your income. Others might be in the market for a new web host. If you are pleased with your hosting solution, why not share it and make some commission in the process? Are you using a template as your website? Even if you are using a free template, many of them offer affiliate commission on their paid templates. People are always looking for cheaper – and better – alternatives. If you are confident you are using the cheapest domain registrar, try linking to it with the (low) price listed. If it indeed is very cheap, people WILL use them, they have little reason not to.

Never underestimate the amount of visitors at your site, thinking they are NOT there for the reasons you intended. The reasons for them seeing your website are many, but if they are actually viewing your pages you have a good opportunity to serve them with some pre-sold affiliate links to click.

There are many services offering some sort of untargeted traffic, some better than others. But if you are using any of these methods – such as social bookmarking – odds are people will view your page without any interest in your actual content. If visitors arriving this way like your site, they will often look around a bit too see what it’s about. These are the people you are hoping to send to the newly signed affiliate programs.

If you have an about-page, why not make a short list of the services you are using, all with affiliate program links, and see what happens over time. Who knows, the results may surprise you.

Link Exchanges To Gain Affiliate Commission

Usually link exchanging is done to raise your link popularity or pagerank – But if done correctly, you may find your self with literally thousands of visitors – with one thing in common. Figure out how to USE this web traffic; don’t let it go to easily.

Exchanging links – weather you do it manually or use a service for it – is mainly to gain more link popularity – thus gaining positions in the search engines. This is perhaps the most common way of improving your page rank, and it’s very effective. But, a side effect most webmasters don’t think of is the traffic they attract while doing so.

If you are using a link exchange service to exchange links, you can – and should – try to take advantage of all the webmasters coming to your site and/or link pages. Most webmasters won’t take the time to check out your offers, but if you can present them with an on-target banner or text-link – promoting a product directly related to webmastering, link exchanging or anything similar – you will find yourself with a new way of making affiliate commission.

The link exchange I used for this experiment - link2me – has the option of upgrading for roughly $30, making it possible to send out unlimited link exchange request. I’m not sure how many sites they have in their directory, but – trust me – it’s plenty. They also have an option at every request, enabling you to present a specific link page to the recipients of your link exchange request. This is where you will have the opportunity to add well chosen affiliate links. This page should actually BE a link page, and I encourage you to actually utilize the service and exchange some links. If you ask for a link exchange with every site listed, you should find yourself with thousands of webmasters looking at your link page to evaluate if they want to accept your exchange request. A good addition might be SimplyLinking, allowing 20 free requests daily.

If you want to take this one step further, it is possible to further target the visitors by making several link pages – each with a more narrow advertisement, and choosing what page to show for each link request. Because you know what their site is about, you can find and add affiliate links on a detailed level.

Choosing the correct affiliate programs for this is easy, but it can take some time to get it perfected though. The best way of evaluating it is by using different affiliate programs on different link pages. Look in your web statistics and compare the traffic on each link page with the amount of sales or clicks to the affiliate programs, then choose the ones with the best conversion rate.

There are many affiliate programs with products or services for webmasters. A webmaster engaged in link exchanging is bound to be interested in others ways of improving their page rank, or other ways of marketing their site. This include services such as; Link exchanges, article submissions, directory submissions, SEO services or simple, everyday products such as web design and hosting. If you are a bit imaginative, you can probably think of many, many other subjects which might be of interest.

Using this method on every new built site will give you both page rank and possible affiliate commission, this while still building your link popularity.

Add more revenue with affiliate programs

If you are selling a service or product online, and you want to increase your revenue even further, one idea is to join a few relevant affiliate programs. No matter what products you are selling, odds are you can find a profitable affiliate program matching your content. But, be sure you do not join a program offering products to similar to yours, that way you do not risk sending your hard earned customers to shop elsewhere.

Knowing exactly what programs to join is hard – not to say impossible – but if worst comes to worst, you can always join another program if your first choice turns out to be wrong.

Most websites have pages not intended to market their products or services directly, but to explain various details of the site, company or area of expertise. These pages are perfect for promoting products closely related – but not competing products. If you have an art site – perhaps selling your own work – you might have a few pages describing the canvas, paint of choice or the technique used to make your paintings.

Assuming you only sell your paintings and nothing more, you can easily add a few banners for selected affiliate programs on your site. Find a program selling the canvas YOU are using, and explain to your readers why you choose it. If you have a good reason for using that particular brand, people may feel intrigued to try it out them selves.

If you are on the other side - selling art supplies - perhaps you can find a few affiliate programs selling paintings made with your material.

Except for really large websites, most sites are somewhat specialized, making it easier to find non-competing products to promote. The easiest way is to search for affiliate programs using similar keywords, but staying clear of the ones targeting your own top keywords and/or phrases.

Start by trying to figure out what areas of your trade you are NOT covering with your website. After you have figured this out, search or browse for an affiliate program matching any of these areas, more often than not you will find many programs matching your criteria. If you can’t find a program matching but NOT competing, you have to broaden your search. The risk of giving your existing customers away – for merely a commission – is worse than the potential profit you can make from the customer. In rare cases, you can find programs good enough to risk it, but that is something every website owner needs to figure out her self.

To broaden your search, try to figure out what your visitors might have in common, except the interest in your website. If you can pinpoint a few likely areas of common interest, you have a good starting point for finding a good affiliate program.

The trick is to find common areas between your site, your customers and the large amount of affiliate programs online. Considering the numerous programs of pretty much all niches, no matter what your site is about, there is a good chance you can find many similar products. For websites with only a few products, this can really help to add to the revenue without risking sending people to competitors.

5 important factors when choosing affiliate program

Choosing an affiliate program is presumably easy, yet many webmasters won’t find the program best suited for their site. In order to maximize your online revenue, you should – before choosing program – consider a few factors.

When deciding what affiliate program(s) to use on your site, there are many factors to consider. You will, of course, have to narrow down the selection by searching for programs related to your site’s topic. But, depending on site, you will find yourself with a quite long list of potential affiliate program – All with different types of commission. What should you choose, what information is relevant, and most important, which program will make you the most money?

#1 - Size of commission

The size of commission is, of course, the single most important factor. While this is an easy factor to compare, the comparison between a fixed commission and revenue share can pose a problem. You need to look at the estimated average sale to get a figure to compare. This isn’t always easy, but generally speaking the higher the price of the product, the higher your revenue will be. This is easy enough, but sometimes the products are cheap, but people but many items, thus adding up to nice commissions. Try to evaluate the niche you are in, who are you referring? What are they likely to buy? The more information you have about your visitors, the better off you’ll be.

# 2 - Compatibility

Equally important is the compatibility between you site and the program. Are your visitors likely to click the ads? Are the likely to buy? Don’t settle for just any affiliate program in your niche, you need to find the best affiliate program available for your site. Visit the site you are advertising, have a look around. Would you shop there? Is it a nice looking, easy manageable site? If you wouldn’t shop there, odds are your visitors won’t either.

# 3 - Recurring commission

A very important, but often forgotten, variable to look at is whether or not the affiliate program offers recurring commission. What this means is: The customer referred by you stays yours for a limited time, or for life. If you find a good affiliate program with recurring commission, you do not need to send many customers before it really adds up.

# 4 – Promotional tools etc.

A very good way of further increasing your conversion ratio is to look closely at the promotional tools, banners and potential offers the affiliate program are using to convert the traffic you send. In some niches – gambling in particular - the competition is so hard they have to offer their visitors high bonuses or the like, just to stand a chance of converting them. In cases like this, you would want to promote a program offering good bonuses; otherwise you stand a much lesser chance of sending highly converting traffic.

#5 Payout frequency, type and threshold

If you are running a small site, or if you use many different affiliate programs, you will need to look at the payout threshold AND payout method. See to it you will get your commission within a fair period of time, and that they offer easy and cheap ways of collecting your commission. International checks can, in some countries, be very expensive to cash in. No fun in paying $10 dollar to cash in a $25 check, now is it? You should glance on the frequency of payments as well. Most affiliate programs pay monthly or bi-monthly, but be sure to check it out.

Traditional PPC affiliate programs

Due to the popularity of contextual advertising, webmasters often forget the traditional affiliate programs, some offering similar options as far as paying for clicks instead of sales. If you find a program of this kind in your niche – and you have a page with some traffic – this might be a better option for you. If you place these ads on the right pages, you will be amazed how well they can perform. But, be sure to read the fine print before you send them your traffic, sometimes the PPC option is worse than the revenue share model.

With PPC affiliate programs where the publisher (you) places a link with your affiliate ID embedded to the program, you get paid for every visitor you send. You have total control over you own ads, no script are placing them for you, thus making you in charge of the relevance – or lack there of - of your ads. The price per click is mostly fixed, or in some cases depending on the quantity of visitors delivered, more visitors equal higher rate for every click.

In contextual advertising, the advertisers have the ability to set a max price AND a daily budget, leaving them in total control over their costs. For traditional affiliate programs this isn’t an option, they have a set price and static links, delivering traffic around the clock. This is potentially disastrous for any affiliate program, and a problem many affiliate managers solved by use of a required minimum conversion rate to get paid.

When looking at a traditional affiliate program – with a PPC option – you should look closely to see if they have a minimum conversion rate required for your traffic. If you are forced to convert your visitors into sales, and they specify the conversion rate, it’s easy math to see if you would be better off with a revenue sharing model. The amount you earn for sending the maximum visitors per sign-up should be greater than the commission for one sale. If it’s not, you are guaranteed to make more by the use of another revenue model. If the affiliate program offers recurring commission on their revenue share plan, you should think twice before choosing to get paid per click, you will miss out on all eventual recurring sales and commissions. If you plan on using the affiliate program for a long period of time, you will miss out on more than you can imagine.

Traditional PPC affiliate programs offer a very good opportunity if you have visitors interested in what they are advertising. The ads are usually placed on one, or a few pages where the relevance and click thru rate is high, on other pages you will be better off with other types of programs. Always compare your PPC stats with the revenue from other pages, to see if it really is as lucrative as you’d expect. Many times we get dazzled with the fact we get paid for EVERY visitor, not looking closely enough to see we would make more if we went another direction.

However, if you have a page with high click thru rate, you can make good use of any PPC program in your niche.

Choosing the right niche for affiliate marketing

Many affiliate publishers dream of getting a high rank for keywords in competitive niches, but not everyone can succeed. For those not in the first pages on the major search engines, the revenue will be modest at best. A much better way is to target niches and keywords closely related to highly competitive ones. The chances of reaching the top ten will increase drastically, as will the profits.

Competing with highly experienced affiliate marketers will naturally be a tough task. For a new webmaster, interested in affiliate marketing, choosing an easier niche and/or keyword is essential for success. Finding a profitable niche isn’t hard, finding a niche YOU can profit from is much harder. Many use the affiliate programs offering high commissions on popular products, yet only a few make a real income, why?

In the online pharmaceutical market, the demand for the products – with sexual enhancers as the undisputed no.1 – is massive. This has led to many, many online pharmacies popping up. Some are serious, some are only in it for the quick cash. Most sites offer some kind of webmaster opportunity, mainly in the form of an affiliate program.

For a new webmaster looking to build a profitable site, the ongoing hysteria of Viagra, cialis and other sex drugs will often make it easy to believe everyone will make money selling these kinds of drugs and medicine. This, how ever, is not nearly the case. Instead most webmasters find themselves pulling their hair in lack of enough inbound links to get even close to a top search engine position. At first, you might see a huge impact, climbing from page 20 to 11, but as you get closer and closer to the top pages, the competition tightens. If you would put all this effort into a site of less competitive nature, you would probably find yourself with a nice, steady stream search engine traffic.

If you have already got your mind set on a topic and area for your site, perhaps you can make a few minor changes to make it about something slightly different? In this case, the appeal of human sexuality will always attract customers for the business as a whole, but you need to figure out an angle for you.

One idea would be to find a few keywords related to alternative medicine, or herbal medicine. While the products sold on these sites often are of similar nature as pharmaceutical products, the keywords are not nearly as competitive as pharmacies. In all lucrative businesses, there will be frauds and shady sites, only trying to make a quick buck on a popular product or service. In pharmacy affiliate programs, this is really something to look out for. If you see a commission to good to be true, it probably is. If you choose to try to fight for these competitive keywords, be sure not to loose all your earnings by choosing the wrong affiliate program.

In most cases, finding a slightly different approach to targeting keywords may ease your way to making a profit, instead of seeing your site on the fourth or fifth page on Google. As your targeted keywords alter, you will attract other visitors, and you should find an affiliate program matching their needs in order to get good click thru- and conversion rates.