How to Make Money Online without Selling
You have may have read many headlines similar to this one above, or make promises like this one. You probably have spent quite a bit of time reading blog posts with title like this one. BUT, the article might not have measured up to the headline… that won’t make money; I can’t promote that, do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL RUIN MY BRAND!
Well, 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. When you are an affiliate of a affiliate marketing program, you can start selling products without having to wait on product development. 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 the advantages don’t end there. Also, you don’t have to create 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 outstanding affiliate programs will provide the members with a login to a sophisticated affiliate management tool that is based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. The software will give you all kinds of measurements on how your ads are performing.
Five tips for choosing affiliate offers to promote
- 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. Some experts recommend that you look for 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.
- 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 adult content movies on a site that is dedicated to toys for toddlers. 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.
- 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. After signing up, if you are automatically redirected to a page powered by a fully-featured affiliate marketing software program, they are probably serious about their affiliate program. If they don’t have a managed affiliate program, it should give you pause. 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
- 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 they are, give you contact information with phone numbers aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They aren’t likely to ‘forget’ to pay you the commissions that you have generated. If you can find a bio, picture, and phone number of the affiliate site owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to search the Internet to find any complaints about them or 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/
- 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 similar criteria when evaluating affiliate websites. Affiliate website program owners that don’t put support systems in place - something like a ticket system or help desk software - probably won’t care about any their products or customers, and eventually they won’t are about you. 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 brand.
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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