There are several ways of earning money through your website. Between them are selling your own product, selling advertising space, and selling affiliate products. Here we are going to discuss several aspects of selling affiliate products.
You must sell something related to your site
One of the advantages of the web is that is easier to target your audience. On tv for example you have to show your add to everybody watching the tv show. Although you can do some market segmentation by showing your ad on shows for kids, or for teenage girls for example, the market segmentation on the web if much more specific. If your site is about how to grow orchids in the winter, you have a very specific audience. You have the opportunity to target your ads towards your specific audience. You could make a search in google for orchid affiliate and select a merchant from the ones that appear listed.
How to find the right program for you
One option is to look for them on affiliate programs directories. There are many of this on the web and all contain lots of links to affiliate programs that are not part of a network.
There are several affiliate networks with which you can work. The advantage of using an affiliate network is that you have many advertisers to choose. If one not work you can switch to another one easily. Also, affiliate networks are more "trustable". The reality is that some companies don't report all the sales that you make. The disadvantage is that this affiliate networks take part of the revenue so you end up with less than working directly with the company, although this is relative.
Another good option is to use google adsense program. They spider your site and their program selects automatically the ads that are geared toward your site audience. Being text ads they also have a greater click through rate than normal banners.
Other factors to take in consideration
If you choose a program that pay you commissions per sale you have to take in consideration the final sale volume for your site for that product. For example there may be a product that gives you a higher percentage per sale but is sold less that another with less percentage per sale but that is easier to sell.
Take time to do some research, ask on webmaster forums for the program that you are thinking of promoting. On this kind of forums you will find objective opinions of each program. Some questions that you may ask are, Does this program pays on time? Do they report all sales? Check the sites of people in the forum that are using the same program and compare
it whit yours. In that way you will have a better idea of your site chances of earning profit with the same sponsor.
Diego Botello
