Affiliate schemes
One of the most popular ways to make money online is by using affiliate schemes. There are many of these, and some are much more profitable than others. affiliate schemes involve selling a product on your site, on behalf of the original merchant.
So for example, amazon have one of the largest affiliate schemes. You can sign up, add links to your site that advertise a particular book available at Amazon, and receive a commission each time someone clicks through from your site to amazon and buys the product.
Affiliate schemes are available for an enormous range of products and there will usually be something suitable for your niche. Most affiliate schemes are handled by central ‘affiliate scheme’ managers (some are listed at the bottom of this article). Merchants / retailers then approach the affiliate manager site to get their product listed. You then choose from the merchants / products available, apply to that merchant for the right to sell their product (they will often want to see what site you are going to show their products on), and when approved you can start selling their products on your site.
All sounds nice and easy. However, remember that no product is going to sell unless you have visitors to your site who are might be interested in the product. If I advertise ‘website hosting’ on a travel site that only gets 100 visitors a day I am unlikly ever to make a single penny.
There are two approaches to affiliate marketing.
1) After your site is built, search for products that may appeal to your visitors and add them on. You hope to attract the eye of ‘passing trade’.
2) Choose a product first, that you believe you could sell, and then construct a website based around that product.
The first approach is easier to incorporate in an existing site, or is a useful add-on feature if you plan to provide a general information site.
Evidence is that the second type of site will perform much better. Your whole site is based around providing a visitor experience that leads them towards making a purchase, and if someone has come to your site because they are wanting to buy the product you sell, they are more likely to have ‘chequebook in hand’ than smeone who happens upon an advert accidentally.
The problem of the second approach is, as always, being found by your potential customers. If you want to sell ‘website hosting’ (a lucrative market) your site will need to rank highly for ‘buy website hosting’ or similar, or you will need to pay dearly to advertise and attract customers. It is very easy to overspend on advertising and make little return.
For all that, with a suitable time and money investment, there are people who do extremely well fom affiliate marketing. There is a world of people who have learned all the techniques, and find themselves in a position where they can pay, say, $1 for each visitor to their site, knowing that on average 1 in 20 will buy the product on which they make $40 income. Reach this (difficult to find) position and the money should just keep rolling in!
Try www.cj.com, www.tradedoubler.com (predominantly Europe based), AffiliateWindow and www.amazon.com