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How to earn more money with affiliate programs
Affiliate programs are one of the most effective marketing techniques on the web. They create a win-win situation where site A refers a visitor to site B, and site B pays site A a commission if that visitor buys something. If you are the reference site (affiliate), you can earn money without overhead (no product, no store, no risk of collection). On the other hand, the destination site receives a constant flow of qualified potential customers from hundreds, perhaps thousands of affiliated sites, and does not have to spend a penny unless a visitor buys something.
To maximize effectiveness, affiliate sites should consider some commonsense suggestions:
1) The excess of affiliate links confuses visitors and impairs credibility. You want your visitors to see your site as a value-added destination and not just as a cheesy sales site. Recommend links to products that you have tried or that come from good and solid companies. Do not recommend something you do not know just because you get paid. Give your visitors the best advice and they will reward you.
2) If you write articles for your website, try not to include affiliate links in the body of your articles: it will give the impression that you have a personal interest in recommending them. You want your visitors to trust your advice, so don't make your article an excuse to promote products and make a commission. It's okay to include affiliate links, but do it in a sidebar or in a resource table. Whenever possible, link your affiliate partners with text links (since the click of ads is lower and people tend to ignore the banners).
3)Links to unrelated products will not generate good contacts for the destinatio it is better to avoid them.
4) Try to register at a site that manages many affiliate programs to choose from (one of the best there are Commission Junction [www.cj.com] and Befree.com [www.befree.com]). These sites provide you with hundreds of affiliate programs to choose from, and act as a one-stop shop where you can register with multiple providers using only one account and receiving a consolidated commission check.
5) Choose affiliate partners that offer long-term cookies. A long-term cookie (for example, a three-month cookie) means that a visitor who follows a link to one of their affiliated partners today but does not buy anything, can return and buy at any time during the next three months and you still a commission will be paid. The best programs are those that offer unlimited cookies (although there are not many of them). However, a cookie of 90 days or more is very good.
6) Direct link to the product page and not to the main page of the destination site. If you link to the main page, the visitor will have to find the way to the product and may not find it, which will cause him to lose commissions. By linking directly with the product, it will increase the chances of the visitor buying the product (and making a commission). Many destination sites, such as Amazon, recognize this fact and offer a higher commission to affiliates that link directly to product pages than to those that only link to the home page.
