You have may have read many headlines similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You probably have spent quite a bit of time reading blog posts with title like this one. When you were done reading, you might have thought “There’s 15 minutes I’ll never get back”… no way can I make money doing that; that won’t work, do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL DESTROY MY REPUTATION!

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 that isn’t the end of the benefits. You also don’t have to create graphics and other marketing materials – those are created for you by the affiliate program owner.

Another big benefit is that you really don’t have to manually keep track of money or finances. Most good affiliate programs will provide the members sophisticated affiliate management tools that are based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. Software programs like these will enable you to check how your ads are doing and what your commissions are.

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 school of thought is that you should find affiliate programs that offer high percentage payouts. I would prefer to find affiliate program that sell high ticket items and pay large commissions. This affiliate program for promoting 30/60/90 day sales plan templates 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 smart 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 automatically redirected to a page powered by a fully-featured affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. If you get an email message that says ‘here is you affiliate link’ you should think carefully about investing any time. 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 let you know who give you contact information with phone numbers are more likely to treat you well. They aren’t likely to ‘forget’ to pay you the commissions that you have generated. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the website owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to research them to find any complaints 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 programs. Affiliate website program owners that don’t put support systems in place – things like a ticket system or help desk software – probably won’t care about any their products or customers, nor will they care about supporting your marketing efforts. If they do, then you can be rest assured that they are trying to delight their customers. If they AREN’T keeping 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/

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