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You have might have read a lot of headlines that sound similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You probably have spent quite a bit of time reading blog posts with title like this one. BUT, the article might not have measured up to the headline… no way can I make money doing that; I can’t promote that, I can’t put that on my website… or whatever that! IT WILL MAKE ME LOOK SLEAZY!

Done well, it can enhance your brand. 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 become an affiliate marketing associate, you market and promote products without having to develop them yourself. 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 the benefits don’t stop there. You also don’t have to create graphical marketing materials - those are all created for you by the affiliate program owner.

Another great benefit is that you really don’t have to keep track of money or finances. Most of the better affiliate programs will provide the members affiliate management tools that are based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. These programs will help you optimize your marketing efforts so that you get the most out of the affiliate program.

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. Many people think affiliate offerings that offer high percentage payouts are better overall. My preference is to look for opportunities where you can make a large commission from a sale. This affiliate program for promoting sales interview tools gives you the opportunity to earn almost $50 per sale.
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 very effective to choose to promote affiliate programs and products for chocolate desserts on a site that is dedicated to losing weight. 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 in an affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. If they treat your membership in the affiliate program haphazardly, how do you think they treat their customers. 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. People who let you know who they are, give you contact information aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They aren’t likely to try to ‘run and hide’ from you if there is a dispute. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the affiliate site owner, chances are they can be trusted. You will also be able to ‘Google’ them to find any issues 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. It would be wise to use similar criteria when evaluating affiliate offerings. If the affiliate program owner doesn’t have a support system in place - something like a ticket system or help desk software - then they probably won’t care about any problems that you might have. When they do, you can be fairly confident that they are trying to keep customers satisfied. If they AREN’T working to keep customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your image.

There are a couple of affiliate programs that I could 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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