Affiliates

More affiliate news... I love affiliates because they are part of my favourite online earnings group: 'passive' earnings - you stick 'em up and just wait for the money to come rolling in.

Of course, it's not that simple, your affiliate banner needs to be well-placed - on a relevant site with relevant content that your 'punter' can easily find. You need to be working your niche, and find ways to drive traffic...but that's it in a nutshell. I don't pretend that traffic is easy to find, but there are a myriad of ways to get traffic - but of course I am not going to give away too much.

The reason that I am not giving tactics away is that I have been moderately successful promoting one of my domain registrant services 1and1 internet (see the banner below). Since putting this banner up (not the one below, another one elsewhere) I have had about 4 small payouts which probably covers the cost of the domains that I have registered with 1and1...
The reason it is so easy is that 1and1 actually offer great deals (honestly) I don't have to try and persuade anyone, this is an affiliate that sells itself. To my mind, the best affiliates are ones that you have signed up to yourself.

Affiliate payout!

I have spent a lot of time sowing internet 'seeds' that have not yeilded any fruit, as anyone else that has attempted to make some online cash will have done.
Every so often, these can suddenly deliver a huge unexpected bonus as has happened this month with 'linkworth'. Linkworth is a comprehensive package which caters for all type of web site monetisation systems. From simple paid posts to fixed banner adverts and imbedded keyword linking - Linkworth offers a whole host of monetisation tools.
I had taken a few paid posts, but had not yet reached payout and had more or less forgotten about my balance. However, I have also added some affiliate links in my 'Livewyre.NET' website and unbeknown to me, a few users have signed up via this method. When sign ups reach a certain level of activity, I get a payout $50... this took me straight over the minimum payout level and I scooped $74... which is a very nice bonus this close to Christmas... with any luck, I will get an Adsense payout at the end of December too...

Affiliates

Affiliates is one of the ways that anybody can make money online with their own website. I have dabbled a little, and can say that the surest way to make money with affiliates is to have a good niche and know how to be able to promote a site within your niche.

There are general affiliate sites that run schemes from all types of affiliates, and there are specialised services, such as offered by www.sharewealth.com.

Sharewealth specialise in the Health & Beauty sector, so if you have a site or are thinking of creating a site on this theme, maybe you should be hooking up with them.

Whatever your niche, it is going to be more productive to hook up with an affiliate program that is specifically suited to your chosen industry than to use one of the more wide-ranging affiliates.

Using affiliates

I am not a great advocate of affiliates like some people are, but I do see their value. I have cashed out twice from my favourite affiliate scheme, shareasale.com and just received a 'check' for $53. Actually cashing that cheque proved to be highly problematic and quite expensive. I had to drive to a branch of my bank and spent £3.50 on parking ($5), added to that, the bank charged me £8 (£11) to pay in a foreign currency cheque, leaving about $37 remaining from the original $53.
Never mind, next time I will take the option of a direct bank deposit which costs just $7 if I select the option from my Shareasale account.
ShareAsale have lots of different affiliates on offer, affiliates work best if they are very closely associated with the niche that you are working. Although I have tried a lot of different affiliates, only a few actually come to fruition - the more closely they are associated with your site visitors needs, the likelier you are to achieve some sales and make commission.

Affiliates for making money online

Online earnings are available in many forms, and one of the most popular forms is the use of affiliate links on a website or blog. In short, you may receive commission on sales made as a result of a link from a website.
Commissions vary according to the commission rate and the transaction total, but it is not difficult to find affiliates that could potentially pay hundreds of dollars for a single high-value sale. However, getting your visitors to complete a sale may be a bit more tricky...
Some of the most popular schemes are selling software of all types, they generally offer good rates dependent on the price of the software, often offering 50% of the retail price as commission. This can be particularly good if the software on offer is directly linked to your niche.
In my experience, good niche sites are the best way to get affiliate sales, the beauty of the scheme is that the clients usually provides good resources in terms of buttons and widgets to click on and often will provide pages of information that you can copy or adapt to your site including video presentations, YouTube demo's and the like.
There are a couple of ways to get linked into affiliate schemes (you will usually need to be approved for this type of activity), you can either contact the vendor direct and sign up to an affiliate scheme for a specific product/service or you can sign up to a service that has a host of affiliate schemes on offer. The service I have had the most success with is ShareASale I have had genuine sales from their scheme so am in a position to guarantee that they are legitimate.
My recommendations are that you browse through the affiliates on offer to see if they have something that your visitors might be interested in. Then sign up, sometimes you may have to sign up for a particular affiliate as well as signing up to the umbrella scheme - this is a quality control measure so that the vendor has a chance to turn down sites that they feel are not suitable.
You can then decide whether to run ads alongside your normal content, or create a page or content specifically to promote the affiliate. Be warned though, most affiliates don't like you taking out PPC ads with the specific product name - this is to prevent your cornering the market on sales by bidding against other affiliates for the same brand-name keywords.
It may take a while to get established and a lot of trial and error will be required, but with the potentially high commissions on offer, there is a lot of money to be made with affiliates.

Monetising with 'Matched.co.uk'

Everyone is familiar with Adsense and how you can monetise a website with Google Adsense adverts. UK users will also be aware that Google is withdrawing their affiliate scheme for Adsense so that users can no longer earn from referrals. All is not lost however, I stumbled across a new scheme which is UK-based (and therefore pays in ££££) which provides simple non-contextual fixed ads for a fixed price.

Matched.co.uk provide HTML or PHP adverts of various sizes for insertion into a website or a blog and pay a fixed £3 ($6) for each advert. Currently I have five pages accepted giving earnings of £15 per month, you can submit up to 5 pages per website, and up to five websites giving total potential earnings of £75 per month ($150).
You will need to submit the URL's on which you wish to place adverts, and if the page is approved, you will be allocated an advert. This advert is available in various shapes and sizes although the colours are fixed. When you have chosen the shape that fits an available spot on your page, you get the advertising code to insert.
When the code is in place, your page will be spidered to check that the code is active and after the alloted time, you will be paid straight into your bank account.
I presume that this service is geared towards the UK, and I am not sure whether blogspot blogs are acceptable (be sure there will be an advert in my sidebar soon if they are), I don't know the criteria for accepting pages but I do know that I am happy to allocate 125 x 125px of any of my pages for £3 per month... and they pay £5 per sign up... to the new recruit as well as the referrer.

Affiliates or Adsense?

Unlocking the earnings potential with Affiliates.

You get visitors to your blog and you hope that your targeted adsense will inspire your visitors to click on something that will earn you a few cents. My tip: There is a better way… Affiliates offer a list of potential advertisers with specific products to sell – they want you to post their URL and you can get commission on sales or paid per click depending on the scheme. The beauty of the system is that if your blog is targeted towards a particular market, you can find an advert which suits your demographic, thus ensuring some results.
For example, I saw a really good advertising opportunity for a blog or website which features mobile phones. This advertiser is offering to give away phones so is bound to attract attention! I believe the rewards for this scheme were something like $50 per visitor partaking in the ‘free’ offer. Now, each scheme will have it’s own requirements and reward scheme so it is difficult to discuss specific earnings. I tried this type of specific advertising on a website of my own a few months ago and forgot all about it, out of curiosity I checked back last week and I have personally earned $17.50 (payout at $50). I will be checking more regularly now and selecting some new affiliate programs to get involved with – I hope to be able to report increased earnings next time….
I have been using shareasale.com
And they provide a complete package service where I can browse a variety of offers from a wide range of categories, there are currently over 2000 offers to choose from.

Although I'll happily admit that the link above is a referral link, I genuinely believe that this type of promotion may be a good earning tool for the right type of blog. There are even those who have developed web sites BASED on this type of advertising.