I thought it was about time we got down to talking about something that all of us Bizzebee’s do with our own sites – affiliate marketing, which can be a fantastic way to monetize your website. In this post we will talk about what affiliate marketing is and try to answer some of the questions that you may have. Let’s get started…
So, What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a way of earning money on your site by promoting other people’s products. You get a commission for every sale that is made via a referral from your site. Many websites like productexpert.com use affiliate marketing as a way of monetizing their website (as well as other methods) as it can be quite effective when done properly.
What Products Can I Promote On My Site?
Short answer – more than you think!
Many people new to affiliate marketing think that there must only be a handful of affiliate products that they could promote, but in fact there are vast amounts that are available for you to promote.
Think about it – if someone has a brand new product that they want to sell, instead of selling it themselves, they setup an affiliate program for that product and pay a commission (let’s say 30%) to everyone that helps to sell it. This can help that product reach a much wider audience than would have been possible by doing it themselves, which in turn helps them to earn more money.
For this reason alone, many current products, in a wide range of industries, have some sort of affiliate program that you can sign up too. All you have to do is find where the affiliate program is.
OK, So Where Can I Find Affiliate Programs?
There are a few different places to find affiliate products to promote.
The first place you should try is a product’s official website. You may find a link somewhere (usually the footer) where you can join their ‘affiliate program’ or ‘become a partner’ – something along those lines. If you can’t find one, it probably just means that they don’t have an official one.
The second place you can try is a dedicated affiliate product website (like clickbank or commission junction) and search for them there. These affiliate marketplaces have thousands of products available for you to promote (though admittedly they aren’t all worth promoting), in a number of different niches.
The third place you can try is big eCommerce sites. Sites like; Amazon, iTunes, WallMart, etc. all have their own affiliate programs that you can sign up too, allowing you to promote and earn commission on the products that they sell. This method can really help you to find the type of product that you want to promote for your site as they literally have thousands to choose from.
The best bit though is that you can signup to as many different affiliate programs as you want and promote multiple products on your site, all of which can earn you a commission if a sale is made.
What Are The Highest Paying Affiliate Programs Then?
This is a question that comes up time and again and frankly this is the wrong question to be asking!
Instead of asking “what the top affiliate programs are?”, you should be asking yourself “what products would my readers be interested in?” Only then will you truly be able to make the most of affiliate marketing.
For example – Let’s say that we found an amazingly good, high paying affiliate program for an airline and we wanted to promote holidays with them here on Bizzebee. This simply wouldn’t work as Bizzebee is a business site. People aren’t visiting our site looking to book a holiday, they want to learn about ways to help their online business. It wouldn’t matter how much we got paid for a commission as we likely wouldn’t make any sales because our readers aren’t interested.
When thinking about what to promote, ask yourself;
- What are your readers interested in?
- What products do you use that you could recommend?
- Which products are related to your website niche?
So If I Pick The Right Products, I’ll Make Loads Of Money?
Affiliate marketing “can” potentially make you lots of money, HOWEVER a lot depends on the traffic your site is getting. Remember, you only get paid for every sale, not click, which is a result of someone buying via your affiliate link. The more people you get to your site, the more chance you have of people buying.
Affiliate marketing is simply one way that you can monetize your site, but just like any other method, you need to work on building up your traffic. This is not some “get rich quick” scheme, it requires lots of hard work to make it work, but if you do, it can be quite rewarding.
Do you use affiliate marketing on your website? Where do you find products to promote? Please let us know by leaving a comment below.
