The SEO Ninjas

You have may have read many headlines similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You might have spent quite a bit of time reading articles with title like this one. You may have evaluated the information and come to the conclusion that it wasn’t valuable… no way can I make money doing that; I can’t promote that, do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL DESTROY MY IMAGE!

Well, that isn’t necessarily so. 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. As an affiliate marketer program, you get access to products and services that are well supported by professional marketing materials and you don’t have to pay for those materials. 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 advantages don’t end there. You also don’t have to create any marketing materials – those are all created for you by the affiliate program owner.

Another big benefit is that you really don’t have to manually keep track of finances or money. Most really good affiliate programs will provide you with 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. One idea is that you should find affiliate offerings that offer high percentage payouts. My preference is to look for affiliate program where you make a large commission from a referral. 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 too bright 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 redirected to a page powered by a top-tier affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. Personally, I wouldn’t waste my time marketing affiliate products that aren’t managed with affiliate software. 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. Website owners who tell you who they are, give you contact information with phone numbers 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 search the Internet to find any negative information 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. You should use the same criteria when evaluating affiliate website offerings. If the vendor doesn’t have a support system in place – something like a help desk or help desk software – then they probably don’t care about their customers. When they do, you can be fairly confident that they are trying to delight their customers. 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 hit on all cylinders, 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/