5 Tips for Adding Affiliate Links without Trashing Your Site

Whether you’re considering adding affiliate links to your site or are already reaping the benefits, it’s important to do it right.  Affiliate marketing programs offer an opportunity to add additional streams of revenue to your website, and can even become a significant income source when implemented properly.  In fact there are plenty of people who have made a business just out of becoming affiliate marketers.  Affiliate programs are also ideal for newer sites with limited traffic.  An advertiser might not yet be willing to pay for placing an ad on your site, but many companies are willing to pay you based on sales and/or traffic you send their way.  

There is a potential downside though.  We’ve all seen sites that look unprofessional, crowded and trashy, with ads and links scattered everywhere.  Not only are they trashing their sites, they’re probably not seeing the results they had hoped for from their affiliate programs.  When implementing an affiliate marketing strategy, keep these tips in mind to balance affiliate opportunities with your site’s integrity:

1. Keep it relevant.  Your affiliate ads should enhance, not detract from your site.  This means picking affiliate programs that are complimentary to the products and services you offer.  Obviously you don’t want to display ads for competing companies, but there are almost certainly companies that offer complimentary products and services to your own, without detracting from your business.  For example, If you are a business coach, you might post an affiliate ad linking to a page on Amazon.com that lists your personal reading recommendations. 

 

If you’re not retailing books on your site, this won’t compete with your services and will add value for your clients.  Plus, you’ll earn a commission anytime someone you refer makes a purchase on that page, as well as any other page on the affiliate’s site.  On the other hand, an ad for a dating site, while it might pay a higher commission, will cause your site visitors to question what your business is all about.

 

2. Play favorites.  We all have our favorite retailers, services and resources.  Many of these offer affiliate programs, allowing you to capitalize on a recommendation you would make anyway.  The advantage to this is that you’re referring people to businesses you’re familiar with and with which you already have a relationship.  If your favorite office supply store is Staples, for instance, you can become a Staples.com affiliate and get paid when your site visitors buy from their site.  Staples is happy, you’re happy, and you know you’re referring your visitors to a company you trust.  It’s the very definition of a win-win-win!

 

3. Consider your audience.  You know who’s visiting your site, right?  And hopefully you have a good idea of their wants, needs, and buying habits. (If not, that’s a blog for another day.)  One way to avoid trying to be everything to everyone – which never works out well – is to fill some of your visitors’ needs by sending them to sites with which you have an affiliate relationship.  Again, relevance is important.  Just make sure that the sites you’re referring people to are relevant to what you offer and to what your visitors expect from you. 

 

4. Less is more.  Website visitors prefer clean, uncluttered sites that are easy to navigate.  If your site is packed with ads and affiliate links, it will turn off your customers.  That doesn’t mean you have to limit your affiliate relationships though.  Ad management software, like that offered by AdButler.com makes it possible for you to rotate ads, even tracking visitors so they don’t see the same ad over and over.  This way you can limit the amount of space dedicated to ads on your site without limiting your opportunities.

 

 

5. Play the Numbers.  It should be no surprise that all affiliate programs are not created equal.  Some offer a percentage of sales, some offer a flat fee per sale, and still others offer a small commission just for qualified leads.  For example, the popular jobs site, Beyond.com’s affiliate program pays out $.60 just for a referred visitor signing up for a free account.  Now, sixty cents obviously isn’t much, but if you have a site that is likely to drive a lot of traffic their way, it can add up to a nice little extra check every month.  Whatever affiliate partners you choose, be sure to check their program’s performance.  Without going into details about click through rates (CTR), and earnings-per-one-hundred-clicks (EPC), just know that it’s important to evaluate each affiliate partner the same as you would consider any business decision.

 

Go Make it Happen

If you haven’t yet delved into the world of affiliate programs, hopefully now you’ll be able to do so with confidence, knowing you don’t have to compromise the look, feel and integrity of your site while adding some extra income to your business.  And if you’re already an affiliate marketer, hopefully you’ve picked up some information to optimize your efforts.  Either way, be sure to share your thoughts, feedback and ideas.

 

If you’re thirsty for more information about affiliate opportunities, Commission Junction is a great place to start.  As the world’s leader in affiliate marketing, their online learning tools (CJU) are second to none, and surprisingly unbiased.  They also offer thousands of affiliate programs in every conceivable category, so you’ll find plenty of opportunities to maximize your affiliate efforts.

 

Do you have additional thoughts, suggestions, or advice for would-be affiliate marketers?  Please share your comments below. 

Use Affiliate Marketing To Attract Customers Who Would Not Otherwise Find You

Affiliate marketing has been one of the growth areas of the Web in recent years. Sellers of goods and services understand the power of third party endorsement and know that a concerted affiliate marketing campaign could reach many more potential clients than a simple in-house initiative ever could. Anyone involved in e-commerce should consider an affiliate program. If there’s a market for what you’re selling and you have a great USP then you simply need to switch on a family of clones, just like yourself, to help you out!

You can increase your sales potential exponentially by starting your own affiliate marketing program. Work out how much you’re willing to invest and understand that affiliate marketing compares very favorably to the costs of conventional advertising and marketing. Be prepared to “reward” your affiliates very well as they drive business to you.

Many promoters find it best to develop a multi-tiered approach. They will have a fundamental package or service at the front-end, which they are willing to use as something of a loss leader. This product or service will naturally lead to a more expensive product or service and on upward, in tiers. This will require a quite sophisticated sales content or pitch and there should be a natural progression to entice the purchaser of the leading product to buy the bigger package. Using this approach, you can offer a very significant commission to the affiliate to sell your lead-in product, maybe even 75% commission. This should definitely motivate the affiliate and if you have structured your sales funnel correctly you should be able to use the loss leader as an investment towards larger returns.

There are a number of affiliate marketing networks, some specialize in particular niches and others may specialize in upscale. A process of research will uncover the best according to your particular product or service. You will then have to register with the network and may likely have to lodge a certain amount of money representing a potential commission payment due from a sale. The advantage of these networks is that they have a whole host of affiliates lined up and ready to promote your service. Make your pitch enticing to the affiliates and use the power of their own networks to drive sales back through.

Remember that you will have to create sales copy, banner ads and e-mail content for your affiliates to use. The easier you make it for them to promote your site and services the more success you will attain. Remember also that you do not want your message to be doctored by affiliates who do not have the correct amount of information, so you should be sure that your collateral is on target before you sign up with the network.

Have you used Affiliate Marketing to attract customers?

Adam Toren

Make The Most Out Of Adsense And Increase Your Revenue

Adsense is one of the most popular ways for online marketers to achieve revenues. You are essentially becoming part of Google’s massive moneymaking machine and piggybacking on their proven understanding of what drives people to certain pages in the quest for certain types of information. Adsense is the opposite of Adwords or “pay per click,” and is part of a marketing strategy where the advertiser gains partly qualified leads, the affiliate (you) gains revenue and Google, of course, gains income.

As affiliate programs go, Adsense is one of the simplest and requires very little effort on your behalf to sign up. As long as you are not involved in certain banned topics including firearms, tobacco and alcohol, Google will generally accept your site for display purposes.

To make sure that you get the most out of Adsense, you need to optimize your page and content accordingly. This goes to basic SEO, but you must ensure that your primary keywords appear in filenames, title, heading, description and content. Google spiders will be looking for relevance and you need to be as crystal clear as you can. So long as you have taken care of this, relevant ads will be displayed by Adsense on your pages.

The whole principle behind Adsense is that a visitor to your site is keenly interested in your content and the Adsense ads displayed are highly appropriate. Understand that by clicking on the Adsense link, the visitor will be going away from your page, so you need to be prepared for that eventuality. However, his or her act of clicking on the link means that you are going to earn some money.

The amount that you will earn from each “click” varies enormously and Google does not publicize its rates and details. Some clicks will get you only a few cents, while others will be valued at a few dollars or more. Generally speaking, the higher value niche/keyword, the higher click through rate and as an idea you can see rates applicable to keywords within Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool.

Once you have Adsense ads up and running on your site, keep a close eye on what is being displayed. It is perfectly common to see ads for significant competitors. While you may coil back in horror when you first see this, all you need to do is go to your Adsense set up page and enter the URL of the site that appears in the competitor ad to exclude it.

Engage in tracking once you have some results under your belt to see which clicks represent the best payout. Adsense channels allow you to try different page setups, ad placements, color matching and so on.

When you are setting up your webpage for Adsense placement, try and give the ad block as prominent a position as possible. It doesn’t make too much sense if it is tucked down in the lower left, below the fold. Many say that the top left is best. Understand that the more content and more links that you have on a page, the lower number of Adsense clicks you’re going to achieve.

As is common within internet marketing, keywords are everything. You want to be sure that you are trying to score for keywords that have a high demand and low supply. Once again use Google’s keyword tool and find out what the estimated average cost per click is for each idea.

Create a meaningful page with good content, well optimized. Only rank for one keyword per page. Don’t be tempted to just create a page of Adsense ads only (known as “made for Adsense”) as this is against the rules.

Tell us about your experiences with Adsense.

Matthew Toren

Can You Make Money with the New AdSense Applications for iPhones and Other Mobile Devices?

We might have known that it would only be a matter of time before the ubiquitous Google AdSense machine started to tie in to the mobile applications market. There has been a predictable explosion in interest for smartphone applications and it would seem that the sky is the limit. Downloadable applications proliferate for Apple iPhone and Android platforms.

Google is now moving into the mobile ad market following the testing of text and graphical ads in private beta. The web-behemoth has expanded its field testing and is playing with contextual ads for both platforms. According to Google the ads can be targeted by “applications, locations, categories or keywords.”

Program developers can insert a snippet of code within their applications, allowing iPhone and Android powered handsets to display ads. This effectively synchronizes the application with the Google ad network and opens up significant earning opportunities down the road.

One of the challenges associated with the approach is, as always, to get past the typical consumer “ad resistance”. Harold Steinberg, director of business development for Urbanspoon (one of Google’s startup development partners in the venture) concurs. “What we are looking for… is to allow the user to look at the whole application as one and not say, “oh, that’s an ad, I’m not going to pay attention to it.”” If the ad is successfully integrated within the application there is more chance that the consumer will interact with it thus allowing the application developer and Google to make money.

Whilst Google is keeping things small right now and only working in beta with a small number of highly qualified partners, it has (as usual) a clear advantage in this marketplace. When Google opens up and allows marketers to select mobile applications as part of their overall AdSense campaigns, bidding will increase significantly and ad rates will go up.

As the smart phone market experiences unprecedented growth and the future looks equally as rosy, expect there to be significant interest in this platform and good earnings potential. Mobile application usage is expected to quadruple in five years and Google is perhaps banking on the fact that those eyeballs will be drawn to mobile AdSense.

Have you started to use AdSense Applications on your iPhone? We would love to hear your feedback.

Matthew Toren

Making the Most of Your Affiliate Networks

If you have any kind of Pay Per Click or Pay Per Action advertising on your blog, you’re already familiar with affiliate networks. Basically, these organizations offer individual website owners and bloggers the opportunity to place ads from a huge range of companies—from Amazon.com to small independent retailers—on their webpages. The affiliate network assigns a special code to your blog, and when the customer clicks through your ad and buys something, you earn either a commission on the sale or a flat fee (depending on the specific agreement you have).

If you’re new to affiliate marketing, here is one of the most comprehensive lists of affiliate networks I’ve found: http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com/affiliate_center/affiliate_networks.php. Most of these networks require that you apply to them before you can use the ads; but this is just a way to make sure you aren’t misusing the ads and that your website is not doing anything illegal that would affect the retailers’ reputations.

Assuming you have already joined a network or ten and you’ve chosen some ads, how can you make the most of your network to ensure you’re earning money on your blog? One of the best ways is to stay in contact with your affiliate marketing rep. The majority of these companies assign each site owner to a live person who manages your account with them. These individuals work on a commission as well, and they are highly motivated to help you earn money from advertising. Once you develop a relationship with them, they will make sure you get the best information about the ads in your network; and this includes inviting you to be part of special promotions that will earn you higher rates per click or per action.

Another important tip is to review your affiliate networks daily for new promotions and banner art. Changing up your ads on your site can help keep things fresh and catch the eyes of visitors who come there regularly. You want to shy away from making your site into a single wall of blinking, rotating graphic banner ads. The reader will be overwhelmed and it will end up defeating the purpose of the ads by causing them to lose focus on your website. A couple wisely chosen and placed ads can be just the thing to augment your site design, and grab attention.

If you have other forms of electronic communication with your readers or members, such as a regular newsletter, ezine, or email list, you can incorporate links to your affiliates in these as well. Each program within an affiliate network offers several choices in links—banners of every shape and size, text links, and even codes to build forms so that you can be creative with your advertising.

Of course, the most important element in making money with affiliate advertising is getting enough traffic to your site. These ads are absolutely a numbers game, and you need to do everything in your power to get people to you website to view them in the first place.

The bottom line is that earning money from affiliate marketing isn’t just about throwing up a few banners here and there. You need to think strategically and make sure you are using all the tools provided to you. You also want to make sure you stay in compliance with any regulations that the retailers have about advertising. You will void your affiliate network membership if you engage in spam or other unscrupulous advertising practices.

Here are my Top 3 favorite affiliate networks to join and would highly recommend you join (the customer service and product network are top notch!):

Motive Interactive

Never Blue

Market Leverage

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