affiliate

If you want my opinion, affiliate programs are the best way to make money online for free as they don’t require any investment from you. All you will need is an Internet connection and some time to set up everything. But first things first, let’s see what an affiliate program is for those of you who don’t know yet.

An affiliate program is a program that allows companies or individuals to market a company’s products or services for a commission fee per item sold. There are usually 2 parties involved: the advertiser (the company that has something to sell) and the affiliate (the person who wants to help sell this product/service).

Affiliate programs are a great way for an individual or a smaller company to make sales by having other people refer potential clients. This is a very cost effective way to generate new business. In most cases, the commission structure is based on a per sale fee, meaning that as an affiliate, you will only get paid if the person you refer purchases something.

For the Internet marketer, affiliate programs are the most inexpensive way to make money online without spending a dime. Signing up for an affiliate program is free and you can start refering people right away.

Where to find affiliate programs? Many companies have an affiliate program in place. If you go to their website, look for the “affiliate” link in the footer of the site, or maybe in the “about us” section of the site. You wouldn’t believe how many companies are looking for affiliates. They know it’s a cheap way to sell more of their products or services.

There are also many websites that specialized in managing affiliate programs, and I would suggest you look for them first as they will make your job easier. These websites are like a huge market places where advertisers (publishers as they are often called) can list their affiliate programs and affiliates can choose what they want to market. In most cases, you can browse various affiliate programs by category (ie. health, business, sports, etc…) and then it gives you detailed information about how much they pay and what the usual conversion rate is.

I am myself a member of several of these market places. Here are just a few of them:

So once you’ve signed up and become an affiliate for several companies, how do you start making money?

Well, my friend, there is no easy way to do it. If you really want to do it without spending a single dollar, your best bet is to go to forums or blogs related the the product/service you are promoting and talk about it there. But be careful, posting affiliate links on a forum or a blog will most likely be seen as spam. Don’t just go to a forum and post something like “I found the best product ever, here is the link”. This will clearly get you banned instantly.

Instead, try to be genuine and try to participate in the life of the community. Write genuine and interesting comments. Most forums allow you to have a “signature”. Have your affiliate link in this signature. If you write interesting comments, people will notice you and they will be intrigued by your signature and they will click on it.

When I first started marketing affiliate programs, I didn’t know anything about forum rules. I went to a forum and started posting my affiliate links all over the place, completely spamming this poor forum. I got banned within hours. I learned my lesson. I created a new account and went back to the forum and started posting interesting comments, asking genuine questions. It worked for me. I post at least one post a day in about 20 different forums. In each of these forums, I have a signature with my affiliate links in it. This makes me about $100/day. About 1 hour of work makes me $100/day, sometimes more.

If you have your own blog or website, this is the best way to talk about your affiliate programs. Write posts about it, have your affiliate links in your sidebar, or even have banners on your site that link to your affiliate programs. If you don’t have traffic coming to your site though, it will not do much…

The best way to promote an affiliate program is through Pay Per Click advertising. You will have to spend a little money “buying clicks” but it is the most effective way to promote an affiliate programs. I promote something like 50 different affiliate programs through PPC. It took me a while to set them all up but now it’s running smooth. I make about 30 sales/day through PPC advertising. At an average of $20/sale, that’s $600 in revenues. I do spend an average of $150 in PPC on a daily basis so I make a profit of about $450/day. These are average numbers. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less.

I think I covered the most important ways to generate money through affiliate programs. If you want to get serious about it, I would highly recommend buying some of the following eBooks. I know this blog is called “Making Money Online For Free”, but sometimes you have to spend a little to make money…

  • Commission Blueprint – teaches you everything you need to know about making money with ClickBank (you can replicate with other affiliate marketplaces). A must-read! Although pricey, it is the most comprehensive resource out there for making money with affiliate programs
  • Secret Affiliate Code – not as comprehensive as the Commission Blueprint but a great resource as well. If you’re on a budget, this is your best bet
  • Google Money Pro – will teach you everything about Google Adwords. I though I knew Google’s PPC system but after reading this ebook, I realized that I knew 10% of it. This ebook is the reason why I make so much money with Google Adwords