How to Make Money with Affiliate Programs

There are a lot of terms in Affiliate marketing, so I think a good first step is to define some of them for you here so you can follow along.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is the process of using one website to drive traffic to another. In most cases, an online retailer trying to increase traffic (and sales) to its site by allowing other sites to link to them and paying out a commission on the sales generated by those links.

Affiliate Program: An affiliate program is an online marketing program where an online retailer recruits website owners to add buttons, banners or links to their site. When a customer clicks on those links the website owner is paid a commission (percentage) of the resulting sale.

Affiliate Network: An Affiliate Network is a company that acts as a third party between online retailers and their affiliates. The Affiliate Network provides the web interface for recruiting affiliates and creating and tracking links. The affiliate network usually also makes the commission payments to affiliates and aggregates the payments from multiple merchants into one monthly check.

Affiliate Program Manager: The affiliate program manager is a role in an organization's marketing department. This person works with the Affiliate Network to make sure that the banners and links available to affiliates are up-to-date and reflect the company's current promotions. They are responsible for increasing their businesses sales through the Affiliate channel. When you join an affiliate program you will have the contact information for that company's affiliate manager. Do not be shy to contact them when you have a question about a promotion, need a different size creative to fit your site layout, or just have general questions and suggestions.

Publisher: A person who puts content on the web, owns a website, or writes pages on Squidoo is considered a publisher. Publishers control valuable online space that retailers want to get into. By putting their links on our pages we are getting their goods and services in front of new potential customers.

Affiliate: A publisher who applies to - and is accepted into - a retailer's Affiliate program becomes an "Affiliate" of that company.

Merchant: A merchant is a person or organization that has something to sell. In an affiliate program setting, the merchant is the online retailer or service provider that is recruiting affiliates to post their links and drive traffic to their site.

I am going to use Commission Junction as the example for signing up for an affiliate program. Having worked with several programs over the years, I believe Commission Junction (CJ) is a great place to start. They have a user friendly interface and a wide range of merchants to partner with. Linkshare is another great program - I have signed up for both and use links from programs in each of these networks on my lenses.

Getting In

• Start by going to www.cj.com - the Commission junction website.


• On the top right of the page, click on the words "Get Started"


• On the next page, click on the figure depicting a "Publisher" - that's what you are! And then go to the bottom of the page and click the blue button to get started.

Filling Out Your Info

On the next pages you will be asked to fill out information about yourself and your website. As Squidoo is a little bit different than owning your own traditional website, please pay attention here and fill out accordingly:

• Do you already have a publisher account: If you are reading this I will assume the answer is No.


• Language and Currency Preferences: Good news if you are not based in the US! Commission Junction also has many international advertisers. Answer accordingly.


• The Fine Print: Scroll through the Service Agreement box - even if you do not read all of it, you must scroll to the bottom of the box and click the "Accept" button in order to select the check box at the bottom. Also agree to the Code of Conduct, Age Certification, Privacy Policy and Certification of Authority on this page

Filling Out Your Site Information

Here is the hardest part (and it's really not that hard). You will be asked to fill out some information about your "site". Keep in mind that this is the information that Affiliate program managers at the businesses that you want to partner with will be reviewing when they decide whether or not to accept you into their program.

You can go back and edit this later, but chances are once you get into the Commission Junction - or other Affiliate Network - site and see all of the retailers available to you, you will be like a kid in a candy store clicking and applying to programs.

While many affiliate programs accept anyone who applies automatically, the programs for more upscale and well known retailers DO review affiliate applications. I have been declined from several affiliate programs that I really wanted to promote, so I am going to tell you how to do it correctly.

Here is what Commission Junction asks you for:

• Website or Newsletter Name: In this field, just type "Squidoo"


• Website URL: This is the URL that the Affiliate Program managers will be looking at to determine if they want you promoting their products and services. Make this your lensmaster URL. Here's mine:
  
  http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/kspoll
  
  


• Describe Your Website: Use this field to concisely describe your collection of lenses. For example, "Niche website focusing on (topic a), (topic b), and (topic c).
  
  
• Category: From the drop down list select one of the categories that best matches the predominant theme of your lenses.


• Current Monthly Unique Visitors: From the drop-down menu, select your monthly unique visitors. Most likely "less than" 99K UVs (unique views) - if higher, good for you!


• Define Your Promotional Methings, if Any: Most likely you are doing the first two check boxes. Probably not the second two. Check any that apply.

Personal Information

Continue through the application and fill in your contact information, using your name as your business name if you do not have a registered business name. Hit "submit" and you are in!

Congratulations! You are now part of an Affiliate Network. Now it is time to go and sign up for affiliate programs from retailers and service providers whose offerings complement your lenses. Click on "Get Links" to begin browsing the advertisers available to partner with.

While you're at it, go sign up for Linkshare too!

Before you go any further, re read the advice above. Although there ARE affiliate programs that will approve you automatically, whether you have quality lenses or not, there are many more that will reject your application and then refuse to re-review your application later on when you have built up some decent content.

So what should you do? Think about the topics you like to write about and what types of programs have complementary products for you to promote. Once you have several lenses on that topic it is time to apply to those programs.

Do Not - I repeat, Do Not go in and apply to every affiliate program in the network all at once. As your Squidoo lens topics broaden, re-review the programs available to you on the Affiliate Network and apply to programs that will complement the lenses you have written. If you feel that a retailer's program will complement an existing lens, hopefully that retailer's affiliate manager will feel the same when they review your application.

I like to think of each of my lenses as a "storefront". When I am finished writing about a topic that interests me, I take a look at the lens and try to imagine who will be reading it, and then I try to determine what products that person may be interested in.

Another great thing about Squidoo is that it is EASY to make changes. If the products I am merchandising my lenses with are not selling, it is easy to go in and make changes. Switch my products around, or try using text links within the copy vs. banner ads. This is a learning process. Don't be afraid to try new things and switch things up from time to time.