Revenue Streams Part II – Affiliate Marketing

In part one, we covered how to monetize your blog with contextual ads like Adsense and ad networks.  Here we go beyond placing ads on the page to:

  • becoming an affiliate
  • sell a product or service
  • create a membership site
  • consult / speaking engagements

Affiliate Income

An affiliate is someone who receives a small portion of each sale that they refer – like an independent sales representative. You are virtually unlimited in how you market the products that you are an affiliate for. For example, you may write a post about them, give away an item with purchase, or leave an add in the sidebar to name a few. Most contracts (that you should read BEFORE you sign up) will forbid using rebates (wherein you pay them a part of your commission to get them to purchase the product) to make the sale.

Affiliate Marketing Guidelines:

  1. Be upfront about links that will pay you back. I don’t like doing this, as I feel that it makes my opinion seem ‘purchased’ or somehow less honest, however it is required to comply with the USA Federal Trade Commission. Why do I (a Canadian) do it? Because I want to be seen as ‘above board’, with high integrity, and transparent (even if I grumble a bit about it).
    If the bloggers in the US decided to implement this with enthusiasm, they could singularly redefine the standard for integrity on the internet.

    • Add “*aff link” to tweets and facebook status posts
    • Add a full disclosure statement as a page in your blog
    • link to “Blog With Integrity“ if you agree with the contract
  2. Your income from affiliate links is directly proportional to the amount of marketing that you do for that product
  3. Only sell those products that you can get behind personally
  4. Select products that will supplement your message, and serve your audience. The idea is to always add value to your website to encourage more visitors, and keep the regulars.

PS – We have an affiliate program that pays $30 for EACH limousine service or design ordered.

You can also find more products to offer to your readers, by signing up at various Affiliate Marketing companies. This link has a list of 153 different marketing networks – each offering over 100 products!! But since I’m a bit of a chicken (and you should be too) when it comes to risking my reputation, I will recommend the same ones that Darren Rowse does:

  • Amazon Associates Program
  • Clickbank Affiliate Program,
  • Commission Junction Affiliate Program
  • Linkshare’s program

At the very least, that is a good place to start.

I was going to go into the other 3 topics – speaking, producing an article, or otherwise freelancing, but I think we’ll save that for another day. Go digest some of these links, and be sure to have those ad networks working!

See:
my Ad Networks post

If you’re new here, you may want to see our 5 Guiding Principles and What Do We Do posts.

Comments

  1. Jendi says:

    Check your favorite sites for affiliates.
    Since I have a site about video people are constantly asking what software/hardware I use so I’m trying to get affiliate links available for those.
    Don’t forget your host service. It’s easy to add a small button out of the way somewhere for your host and hosts usually have a nice payout.
    A resources page is a great way to unobtrusively list your affiliate links.

  2. Ben Maule says:

    Thank you for some great ideas to help gets ranked higher in Google. I have made a few videos and need to get more made. Also need to get some press releases written.

    Thank You:)

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