July 3, 2009

You have may have read many headlines that sound 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. You may have evaluated the information and come to the conclusion that it wasn’t valuable… no way can I make money doing that; that won’t work, do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL WEAKEN MY ONLINE BRAND!

If you to it right, 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. When you join an affiliate marketing program, you get access to products and services that are already proven in the market place, usually without any up-front costs. 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 that’s not all the advantages. You also don’t have to create any 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 finances or money. Most really good affiliate programs will provide you with affiliate management tools that are based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. Software management of affiliate program means that you won’t have to ride herd on the affiliate program owner.

Five tips for choosing affiliate offers to promote

1. 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 idea is that you should find affiliate offerings that offer high percentage payouts. My preference is to look for affiliate program where you make a large commission from a referral. This affiliate program for promoting SEO services gives you the opportunity to earn monthly recurring income up to $350.
2. 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 too bright to choose to promote affiliate programs and products for adult content movies on a site that is dedicated to toys for toddlers. 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.

3. 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 powered by a fully-featured affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. If they don’t have software they may not have an accurate way of keeping track of sales and commissions, should think carefully about investing any time. 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

4. 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 find a bio, picture, and phone number of the website owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to ‘Google’ them to find any negative information about 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/

5. 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 similar criteria when evaluating affiliate websites. If the vendor doesn’t have a support system in place - something like a help desk or help desk software - then they probably don’t care about their customers. If they do, then you can be fairly sure that they are trying to keep customers happy. If they AREN’T keeping customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your online brand.

Here are a couple of affiliate programs that I 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/

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