Guide to Using Affiliate Marketing for Your Web Site

Make extra cash by promoting other products and services on your site

By Linda Formichelli, Freelance Writer

1. Make extra money from your site.
2. Offer your visitors helpful products and services related to your site's topic. For example, if your site is about marketing, you can suggest marketing books to your visitors. If you sell dog training services on your site, you can also offer your visitors pet-related products.
3. Offer products without having to actually price, process and warehouse them.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Learn the lingo

Cost-per-click, cost-per-lead, merchant, affiliate: Before you become an affiliate, get a grip on the terminology and the basic how-tos.

I recommend: To learn the basics, see Powerhomebiz's Understanding Affiliate Programs and Taming the Beast's Successful Affiliate Marketing.

Know thy customers

Why do people visit your site? The answer will help you determine what types of affiliate programs you should join.

I recommend: Keeping track of where your site visitors are coming from and the keywords they enter into search engines to reach your site will give you clues as to what they're looking for. Sign up for StatCounter.com (it's free) to keep tabs on your visitor stats. (Some affiliate programs do the work for you by automatically delivering ads that are targeted to your site's content; see below.)

Choose a program

After you decide what kinds of products and services will be the best match for your site and your visitors, find an affiliate program that lets you offer them.

I recommend: Popular affiliate programs include Amazon.com Associates (books), ClickBank (digital products), Commission Junction (products of all types), Google AdSense (ads targeted to your site contents) and Yahoo Publisher Network (ditto).

Pump up the visitor volume

Attracting visitors to your Web site is always important — but it gains even more importance when you're trying to earn income as an affiliate. The more site visitors you have, the more chances you have to earn commissions from click-throughs, leads or sales.

I recommend: Entrepreneur.com offers a advice on boosting your page visits. To optimize your site to rank higher in the search engines, try the free optimization tools at Agentinteractive.

Buyer beware

Don't get duped into joining a pyramid scheme or MLM program disguised as affiliate marketing. Also, never pay for the privilege of selling someone else's products on your site.

I recommend: See All Merchants' "affiliate red flags" and Translation Directory's tips on Affiliate Marketing Scams.

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Figure out what kinds of ads you'd like to run on your site — and what kinds you want to avoid. Do you hate pop-ups or pop-unders on other sites? Would animated banner ads make your page load too slowly? Then, make sure the program you join lets you run ads of the type you prefer.
• •  To avoid being scammed, make sure the affiliate program has a Web site with contact information and that it offers a clear description of what you need to do, how much, and when you'll be paid. Try Googling any programs you're considering to see if you unearth any complaints.
• •  Make sure the ads you run are of service to your visitors and that they're professionally done. Nothing turns off a visitor more than seeing random, intrusive ads that are unrelated to the topic of your site.