Making money online does involve choosing the right affiliate programs and in this post, you would find some of the basic affiliate programs that are going to be ideal for bloggers in general.
When you start out with your online business and are yet to decide your niche, the basic question that pops up in your mind after every niche idea is- Will this niche will make some money or not ? If the answer to that question was yes, then we go about thinking how? If we are unable to get any ideas then we leave the entire niche idea behind. We fail to understand is that every niche is profitable provided that monetizing is done the right way.So, as a beginner, I suggest you at least get started with some niche(just make sure to narrow it down).,
I have been into affiliate marketing for a while and have known many people who are successful affiliate marketers and own websites in various niches. From my personal experience, I can assure you that within any niche you can make money although initially, it would be like a part-time income but eventually you would be making enough money to quit your job.
I had many niche ideas when I started out and always wondered if I could make money out of all niche ideas that comes to my mind. The truth is making money from any niche is possible once you have a relevant audience reading your site which would generate some quality traffic. I realized that monetizing your website is easy. The difficult part is getting relevant traffic to your website and that is a relatively slow process and can take a few months to happen.
What are affiliate programs?
Making money from your website can be done in many ways but one of the most often used methods is affiliate marketing. I have been using it and many of my friends have been doing affiliate marketing for years so it is a proven method which never goes out of style when it comes to making money online. But, how does affiliate marketing work?
When you have your own blog in a specified niche, you may have some genuine product recommendations, now when you recommend these products to your audience you would earn some affiliate commissions. So, you need to promote products which promise quality and it would be much better if you can relate to it personally
Don’t get me wrong here. By promoting products, I do not suggest that you go ahead and promote things which are irrelevant and not useful. If you are an affiliate marketer, you need to be very careful with the products you promote because you do not want to disappoint your audience. Helping your audience is something you should focus on when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Even if you make money by misleading your audience, they would just end up returning the product which would not be good for your site and eventually your blog will have a bad reputation as well. The plan here is to help people who want to make a purchase by providing them some honest reviews about the product which would eventually result in some sales. Not only will your audience buy products from you but they would love to come back to your page and buy products recommended by you.
How do I make money from these affiliate programs?
Once you sign up as an affiliate, you get your own affiliate ID for different products that you choose to promote. All you need to do is copy and paste the affiliate links on your web page. This allows you to have your cookie set on your visitor’s PC. Now the cookie can stay for a day or even more, this totally depends on the affiliate program. Some affiliate programs have lifetime cookie so whenever someone buys products from that site which may or may not be related to your niche you are certainly going to make a commission because of the cookie.
Now, Amazon Affiliate Program has a 24-hour cookie which means that once a person clicks on your affiliate link and buys a product from amazon you get a commission (which can range from 6-10 percent). Not only can you bag the commission for the product that you have been promoting but you can also get commission for anything else that they buy from amazon within 48 hours. You are in luck if that turns out to be an LCD TV or anything expensive.
What are the chances of this happening? We all know that when someone browses amazon, it is rare that they check out with only one product in their cart. So, all I can say is that your chances are pretty high. This was about Amazon, there are many other affiliate programs that have their own commission rates and different time period for their cookies.
Will I find an affiliate program for my niche?
Definitely. I think all niches have some good affiliate programs. If your niche is not product related and is something related to dating or a personal blog then you could even offer few courses which you find relevant for your audience.
A simple google search for affiliate programs within your niche would do the trick. There are many ways in which you could monetize your site but affiliate programs are common for most of the niches . If you are looking for online courses or trainings to offer in your niche then ClickBank is an option as well. Another alternative would be to see if the company whose products you are promoting have their own affiliate programs.
Bottom line is that finding an affiliate program for your blog is not going to be herculean task and you would be able to easily make money from your blog but the important factor that would help you make some money online is to have a relevant audience who reads your blog. Having considerable traffic is really important before you step out there and started monetizing.
Too many affiliate links?
Try to avoid using too many affiliate links on your post. The reasons being you don’t want your post to look like a marketing page and the second one is that you do not want to get on the wrong side of the Google Bots.
Too many affiliate links can push you down in Google rankings and in order to avoid that, use two to three links in your entire post. I usually limit myself to two links and I haven’t seen anything wrong with using three but if you overdo the usage of affiliate links then you would have problems to get to Page 1 rankings. I have never experienced any issues related to using too many affiliate links.
I try to keep my pages simple and with a few one or two affiliate links where ever needed. Do not confuse affiliate links with internal links, because internal links are something loved by google and you could use it to increase your google rankings.
Choosing the right affiliate program
You might sometimes find two affiliate programs which let you to promote the same product but you have the commission rates higher in one of them than the other. It is obvious that you should choose the one with the higher commission rates, so you need to keep your eyes open when it comes to looking for affiliate programs where you can make lots of profit.
Do check the cookie time period if possible and even look out for which of the affiliate programs would provide your audience a much better user experience. These can be a factor that would influence your final money you make from the website. You do not want your audience to get off your page and buy the same product from amazon! That would be a bummer. So choose carefully and make the most of the situation. Never leave money on the table!
Get Started with affiliate programs
Coming to affiliate programs for your blogs there are a few common affiliate programs which you should sign up for and those include:
(1) Commission Junction
(2) Clickbank
(3) ShareASale
(4) LinkShare
Join at least one of them and you can start using the affiliate IDs on your websites. You will need to fill out a simple form and once you finish with that process you are an affiliate. If you want to know how I started out being an affiliate then follow then do follow the training here. There are many more affiliate programs out there which might be niche specific, so go and check them out.
In the case you have any further questions, leave them in the comment section below and I would be happy to help.
Leave a Reply