Posted by Harrace, Senior Internet Marketing Coach

One of the ways to make money on the Internet, if you don’t have products of your own, is using Affiliate programs. However, many affiliate marketers are not really making money on affiliate programs, except some of eOneNet Internet marketing coaching graduates who have become full time Affiliate marketers after making a very decent income from this area.

Today, we have a guest post on Making Money with Affiliate Programs - Top 10 Tips. Here it is.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative ways in which to make money online but so many people fall at the first hurdle. In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is when you take a service or product that`s available on the Internet and you promote it to someone else using a special trackable link.

The most common method is Pay Per Sale (PPS) or revenue sharing. In practice this means if your website features an article on fitness DVDs, for example, you can sign up to an affiliate program that sells them. You can then include a special link, with a URL specific to your account, from your review to the product. Every time one of your users clicks through and buys the product you get a percentage of the sale.

Less commonly, some affiliate programs also offer Pay Per Click (PPC) so will give you commission for every visitor they receive, or Pay Per Lead (PPL) where the affiliate will give you commission for every contact detail they get from a visitor who found them through your site.

If you`re looking to start making money through affiliate programs the best place to start is with an affiliate program or network such as Commission Junction (CJ), TradeDoubler, Affiliate Window, ClickBank, LinkShare or indeed any number of sector or geography specific networks. As an affiliate publishers, the network takes the hassle out of reporting and accounting commissions, collecting payments and of course identifying relevant merchants and providing links and creative for you to use. You can of course opt to sign up directly with a merchant, many of whom will provide tracking, reporting and creative but you will of course need to ensure you get paid!

So, to get you started, here are 10 tips on making money through affiliate marketing.

1. Consider your user. What do you think would trigger them to purchase from your merchants? Start with the reader in mind, not the product.
 

2. Try the product you’ re linking to first. It’s  difficult to promote something if you don`t know the first thing about it. Also make sure yor’re linking to quality products so your website doesn’t get a bad reputation.
 

3. Promote products which are relevant and consistent with your website’s content. For example, if your website is about diets and weight loss, you should source for products from affiliate programs which are relating to diets or weight loss, instead of some unrelated products, e.g golfs.

4. Where possible, always link to a specific page, not the merchant’s homepage, as this “deep linking” approach should ensure better conversion rates.

5. Don’t be afraid to list some of the product`s flaws. This will show your user that you have their best interests at heart and will mean they return.

6. Place affiliate links within the text, or contextually, rather than at the end of a paragraph or after the words “click here”. This will help you to explain the product in greater detail around the link.
 

7. Combine with other revenue streams. Try to complement the links with your pay per click ads, as different users respond to different advertising methods.
 

8. Work on boosting the overall traffic to your site through SEO and PPC. The more people you can get to see your well-placed affiliate links the higher the success rate.

9. Don’t swamp your copy with affiliate links as this will annoy your user (and potentially the search engines) - they will think the only reason you’ve written the article is to make money, not to help them. One very well-placed link will get a greater success rate than ten vague or off-topic ones.

10. Finally, always track your results. Which links worked best? Which products sold well? Then use the results to plan any future activities.
Affiliate marketing in the UK is now a mature industry driving billions of pounds of sales revenues. Choose your sector wisely, work hard on your site and you could be sharing in this success.  www.lammo.net