Affiliate programs are sometimes known to be called associate programs, referral programs, pay-per-click or pay-per-lead programs and bounty programs. The idea behind these is that the merchant who is offering the affiliate program has an opportunity to increase his exposure on the web by placing his advertisement on your website, and paying you for the traffic that they generate directly from your website. You are the "affiliate" and if he can successfully advertise his product or service amongst his affiliates, his opportunities to grow is incredible as well as your opportunities to make some money in the process.
Almost anything that you can imagine being sold, there is an affiliate program for from baseball cards to guitars and video games. This is why it doesn't matter what your website is about, because there is most likely tons of affiliate programs that will appeal perfectly to your viewers, so don't design your website based on the affiliate programs, but rather pick your affiliate programs based on your website and your viewers. Some merchants will pay you for viewers from your website filling out forms or survey, others require viewers from your website to actually purchase a product, while some will pay you for referring viewers to there website whether or not they actually purchase the product or service.
Make sure that you take the time to look at what kind of traffic you get from your website. By this I mean ask yourself whether you generate a lot of hits every single day or if your website is more of a small community of people. If it is the later, then putting affiliate programs that generate only 1 cent per click will take along time to make any money, and it would be a better choice to have a few ads that are focused on your community that will pay you $50 for every sale. On the other hand if your website generates a lot of traffic to a more wide range of viewers its probably safer to put a few pay per sale adds up(again making sure they are targeted towards your viewers, but I will get more in-depth on that in a later section) along with more pay per click advertisements. This isn't always the truth; it always depends on who your viewers actually are. I would say it is best to experiment for a period of 2 weeks at a time using different combinations of the two or all one or all the other. It is also important to experiment on the product or service of the ads, you might find that your websites' viewers click more on video game adds rather then sports supplies adds and in that case you would choose your ads more directed to video games.
One of the things you need to be careful about is whether or not an affiliate program is
trustworthy, most of them that offer riches overnight or advertising gimmicks of the like tend
to take there hits or the products they sold and generated from your website and run, this is
not always true but there are some things that you should do some checking up on before signing
up as an affiliate.
Things to Check:
Make sure to check that they have a contact name, an address, phone number, and other contact
information. If they have references posted from other reputable websites than that
is a good indication that they are true to there word. Also check to make sure that they
have a privacy statement. Make sure the commission is clearly stated and how you will be paid
for your service to them. If an affiliate program does not have all of these than it is
not advised in participating in them, but it is your choice. If you don't want to have to go
to all the trouble of this research then don't worry because in my Affiliate Program Index section I
have a list of reputable affiliate programs that you can trust.
Affiliate programs are a great way to earn some extra money from your website. One thing that is very crucial is to have some patience. Before you have placed affiliate programs on your website you should read my articles on your site, keywords, and all the articles on submitting your website to search engines. If your website is not ready for affiliate programs you will have a tough time. Any comments are much appreciated so email me here.