You probably have already seen dozens, if not hundreds of “make money online ” blogs and websites out there, right? Their popularity is no secret: people see bloggers earning big time in this niche (or at least claiming to), and they decide to jump in to see if they can get a piece of the pie. Unfortunately most people who follow that route will fail in the long run.

A couple of weeks ago I came across a post from Yaro, titled How To Make Money Teaching People How To Make Money, that explained how this pattern unfolds. Here is a quote from it:

Some people consider making money by teaching how to make money essentially a scam. I mean if you know a system of how to make money, why not just use that system rather than sell it? That smells fishy right? Umm, no, I find that logic quite silly. Why not make money using your system AND teaching it.

So, why can a small minority of people earn big in the Internet marketing industry and the majority fail miserably? Is the make money online niche only full of scammers or those who just got lucky?

As someone who has been making money in this niche for years – and I’ve certainly climbed the ladder over time – I’m in a pretty good position to explain the subtle elements that people new to Internet marketing won’t see.

The interesting thing about Yaro’s post is that he is not only explaining why people fail to make money on the “make money online” niche, but he also lays down some points and tips that you can use to succeed. Worth a read.

Everyone seems to like twitter these days which is a really cool way of staying in touch with your customers, friends & colleagues. Basically twitter has presented itself as a micro-blogging platform where a user can shout out anything they want to his ‘followers’ within the limit of 140 characters.

I have just started twittering since last month (*yes I’m pretty late starter!) because initially by looking at it for the very first time, I couldn’t find any ‘value’ that it has for my work & my social life. However after reading a convincing post by Aaron Wall, I thought of giving twitter a try. Since then onwards I have been using twitter all day long, just to keep track of some of the leading experts in the Internet & Search Marketing field as well as to have some ‘fun’ with my online buddies.

Anyway the whole point of doing this post is to highlight some of the key monetization elements that an individual can explore using twitter. I assume you have the basic knowledge of what twitter is and how it works, so I will directly deep into some ideas which can make you earn money from your twitter.

• Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can probably look into direct advertisements for monetization.

• Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.
• Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers.

It works pretty much like niche marketing because, say if you are an Internet Marketer, It is very likely that most of your followers in Twitter are also from the same area which is why they have ‘followed’ you in the first place.

A new ad program was recently launched: PerformancingAds.com. I’ve been using it for more than 4 days now on 2 of my blogs and I find it better than a few other ad programs I’ve tried out. The genius behind PerformancingAds.com is that they’ve merged 2 ideas together… they’ve merged ad selling together with banner exchanges!

Merging Adspace + Banner Exchange = PerformancingAds.com

When you use PerformancingAds.com but all your ad spots don’t sell, they’ll use the un-sold spots for banner exchange purposes and drive free traffic to your blogs!

PerformancingAds Pros

1. Free Advertising: The biggest benefit of using them is their Exchange Ads feature.  If your ad space isn’t sold, they will use the remnant space for banner exchange purposes. They’ll show other websites ads on the spots.  And in return, you earn credits that can be used to show your ad on other blogs.

2. Book Your Own Spots: Another benefit of PerformancingAds.com is that they allow you to sell or use your own ad spots as you wish. So you could sell ads on your own too. Or promote affiliate programs.

3. Ease of installation. Installation on 2 of my blogs took all of 3 minutes. Its very easy to setup and start running.

PerformancingAds Cons

1. Low Payouts: As a publisher, you only get paid 60% of the ad money. So if you sell $500 worth of ad spots, they keep $200 out of it. (But they do allow you to book your own ad spots too. So you can sell ads privately and then list them up.)

2. Un-Transparency: The ratios for their ad exchange program isn’t revealed. And they give away free credits to sites whose ad spots sell. So you may not be getting the traffic you deserve.

Notice that ways to make money with a website are different from ways to make more money from it. Methods to increase your traffic or click-through rate will help you make more money, but they do not represent a method of making money per se.

For example, one could suggest that blending AdSense ads with the content is a way to make money from a website. In reality it’s not; it’s just a way to make more money by improving your ad click-through rate. The real monetization method behind it is a PPC ad network.

The list is divided into direct and indirect methods, and examples and links are provided for each point. Enjoy!

Direct Methods

1. PPC Advertising Networks

Google AdSense is the most popular option under this category, but there are also others. Basically you need to sign up with the network and paste some code snippets on your website. The network will then serve contextual ads (either text or images) relevant to your website, and you will earn a certain amount of money for every click.

The profitability of PPC advertising depends on the general traffic levels of the website and, most importantly, on the click-through rate (CTR) and cost per click (CPC). The CTR depends on the design of the website. Ads placed abode the fold or blended with content, for instance, tend to get higher CTRs. The CPC, on the other hand, depends on the nice of the website. Mortgages, financial products and college education are examples of profitable niches (clicks worth a couple of dollars are not rare), while tech-related topics tend to receive a smaller CPC (sometimes as low as a couple of cents per click).

The source of the traffic can also affect the overall CTR rate. Organic traffic (the one that comes from search engines) tends to perform well because these visitors were already looking for something, and they tend to click on ads more often. Social media traffic, on the other hand, presents terribly low CTRs because these visitors are tech-savvy and they just ignore ads.

List of popular CPC advertising networks:

• Google Adsense
• Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN)
• BidVertiser
• Chitika
• Clicksor

2. CPM Advertising Networks

CPM advertising networks behave pretty much as PPC networks, except that you get paid according to the number of impressions (i.e., page views) that the ads displayed on your site will generate. CPM stands for Cost per Mille, and it refers to the cost for 1,000 impressions.

A blog that generates 100,000 page views monthly displaying an advertising banner with a $1 CPM, therefore, will earn $100 monthly.

CPM rates vary with the network, the position of the ad and the format. The better the network, the higher the CPM rate (because they have access to more advertisers). The closer you put the ad to the top of the page, the higher the CPM. The bigger the format (in terms of pixels), the higher the CPM.

You can get as low as $0,10 and as high as $10 per 1,000 impressions (more in some special cases). CPM advertising tends to work well on websites with a high page views per visitor ratio (e.g., online forums, magazines and so on).

List of popular CPM advertising networks:

• Casale Media
• Burst Media
• Value Click
• Advertising.com
• Tribal Fusion
• Right Media

3. Direct Banner Advertising

Selling your own advertising space is one of the most lucrative monetization methods. First and foremost because it enables you to cut out the middleman commissions and to determine your own rates. The most popular banner formats on the web are the 728×90 leaderboard, the 120×600 skyscraper, the 300×250 rectangle and the 125×125 button.

The downside of direct banner advertising is that you need to have a big audience to get qualified advertisers, and you will need to spend time managing the sales process, the banners and the payments.

Related links:

• How to Find Advertisers for Your Website
• Finding Advertisers for Your Blog
• Direct Advertising Sales for Beginners
• Openads Ad Server
• OIO Publisher Ad Platform

4. Text Link Ads

After Google declared that sites selling text links without the nofollow tag would be penalized, this monetization method became less popular.

Many website owners are still using text links to monetize their sites, though, some using the nofollow tag and some not.

The advantage of this method is that it is not intrusive. One can sell text links directly through his website or use specialized networks like Text-Link-Ads and Text-Link-Brokers to automate the process.

Text link marketplaces and networks:

• DigitalPoint Link Sales Forum
• Text-Link-Ads
• Text-Link-Brokers
• TNX
• LinkWorth

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a very popular practice on the Internet. Under this system you have a merchant that is willing to let other people (the affiliates) sell directly or indirectly its products and services, in exchange for a commission. Sometimes this type of advertising is also called CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) based.

Affiliates can send potential customers to the merchant using several tools, from banners to text links and product reviews.

In order to find suitable affiliate programs you can turn to individual companies and publishers like Dreamhost and SEOBook, or join affiliate marketplaces and networks.

List of popular affiliate marketplaces and networks:

• Commission Junction
• ClickBank
• Azoogle Ads
• Link Share

6. Monetization Widgets

The latest trend on the web are widgets that let you monetize your website. Examples include Widgetbucks and SmartLinks. Some of these services operate under a PPC scheme, others behave like text link ads, others yet leverage affiliate links.

Their main differentiator, however, is the fact that they work as web widgets, making it easier for the user to plug and play the service on its website.

List of companies that provide monetization widgets:

• WidgetBucks
• ScratchBack
• SmartLinks

7. Sponsored Reviews

PayPerPost pioneered this model, with much controversy on the beginning (related to the fact that they did not require disclosure on paid posts). Soon other companies followed, most notably Sponsored Reviews and ReviewMe, refining the process and expanding the paid blogging model.

Joining one of these sponsored reviews marketplaces will give you the opportunity to write sponsored posts on a wide range of topics. Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website (because it might compromise the editorial credibility), but the ones who do are making good money out of it.

If your blog has a big audience you could also offer sponsored reviews directly, cutting off the commissions of the middleman.

List of sponsored reviews and paid blogging networks:

• PayPerPost
• Sponsored Reviews
• ReviewMe
• BlogVertise
• Smorty

8. RSS Feed Ads

With the quick adoption of the RSS technology by millions of Internet users, website owners are starting to find ways to monetize this new content distribution channel.

Feedburber already has its own publisher network, and you can sign-up to start displaying CPM based advertising on your feed footer. Bidvertiser recently introduced a RSS feed ad option as well, with a PPC scheme.

Finally, some blogs are also opting to sell banners or sponsored messages on their feed directly. John Chow and Marketing Pilgrim are two examples.

Related links:

• Feedburner
• BidVertiser
• Pheedo

9. Sponsors for Single Columns or Events

If you website has specific columns or events (e.g., a weekly podcast, an interview series, a monthly survey, a special project) you could find companies to sponsor them individually.

This method increases the monetization options for website owner, while giving advertisers the possibility to target a more specific audience and with a reduced commitment.

Mashable illustrates the case well. They have several advertising options on the site, including the possibility to sponsor specific columns and articles, including the “Daily Poll” and the “Web 2.0 Invites.”

Problogger also runs group writing projects occasionally, and before proceeding he publicly announce the project asking for sponsors.

10.Premium Content

Some websites and blogs give away part of their content for free, and charge for access to the premium content and exclusive tools.

SEOMoz is a good example. They have a very popular blog that gives advice and information on wide range of SEO related topics. On top of that visitors can decide to become premium members. It costs $48 monthly and it grants them access to guides, tools and other exclusive material.

11. Private Forums

While the Internet is populated with free forums, there is also the possibility to create a private one where members need to pay a single or recurring fee to join.

SEO Blackhat charges $100 monthly from its members, and they have thousands of them. Obviously in order to charge such a price for a forum membership you need to provide real value for the members (e.g., secret techniques, tools, and so on).

Performancing also launched a private forum recently, focused on the networking aspect. It is called The Hive, and the monthly cost is $10.

These are just two examples. There are many possibilities to create a private and profitable forum, you just need to find an appealing angle that will make it worth for the members.

List of popular forum software:

• vBulletin
• Simple Machines Forum
• phpBB
• Vanilla

12. Job Boards

All the popular blogs are trying to leverage job boards to make some extra income. Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger… you name it.

Needless to say that in order to create an active and profitable job board you need first to have a blog focused on a specific niche, and a decent amount traffic.

The advantage of this method is that it is passive. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings will come naturally, and you can charge anywhere from $10 up to $100 for each.

List of popular job board software:

• JobThread
• Web Scribe Job Board
• SimplyHired Job-o-matic
• Jobbex

13. Marketplaces

Sitepoint is the online marketplace by excellence. Some websites and blogs, however, are trying to replicate that model on a smaller scale.

Depending on your niche, a market place that allows your visitors to buy, sell and trade products could work well. Over the time you could start charging a small fee for new product listings.

The problem with this method is that there are no standard software on the web, so you would need to hire a coder to get a marketplace integrated into your website.

You can see an example of a marketplaces being used on EasyWordpress and on Mashable.

14. Paid Surveys and Polls

There are services that will pay you money to run a small survey or poll on your website. The most popular one is called Vizu Answers.

Basically you need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. Most of these services operate under a CPM model.

15. Selling or Renting Internal Pages

Million Dollar Wiki made this concept popular, but it was being used on the web for a long time around (check Pagerank10.co.uk for instance).

These websites sell for a single fee or rent for a recurring fee internal pages on their domain. Usually they have either high Pagerak or high traffic, so that people purchasing a page will be able to benefit in some way.

Implementing this method on a small blog would be difficult, but the concept is interesting and could be explored further.

16. Highlighted Posts from Sponsors

Techmeme probably pioneered this idea, but somehow it has not spread to other websites. The tech news aggregator displays editorial posts on the left column, and on the sidebar they have a section titled “Techmeme Sponsor Posts.”

On that section posts from the blog of the advertisers get highlighted, sending qualified traffic their way. Considering that the monthly cost for one spot is $5000 and that they have around 6 sponsors at any given time, it must be working well.

17. Donations

Placing a “Donate” link or button on a website can be an efficient way to earn money, especially if your blog is on a niche where readers learn and gain value from your content.

Personal development and productivity blogs, for instance, tend to perform well with donation based systems (one good example being Steve Pavlina).

A small variation of this method appeared sometime ago with the Buy Me a Beer plugin. This WordPress plugin enables you to insert a customized message at the bottom of each article, asking the readers to chip in for a beer or coffee.

18. In-text Adverting

In-text adverting networks like Kontera and Vibrant Media will place sponsored links inside your text. These links come with a double underline to differentiate them from normal links, and once the user rolls the mouse over the link the advertising will pop. Should the user click on it the site owner will make some money.

Some people make good money with this method, but others refrain from using it due to its intrusiveness. It is also interesting to note that very few mainstream websites have experimented with in-text advertising.

19. Pop-ups and Pop-unders

Pop-ups are a common yet annoying form of advertising on the Internet. If you are just trying to make a much money as possible from your website, you could experiment with them.

If you are trying to grow the traffic and generate loyal visitors, however, you probably should stay away from them. Just consider the hundreds of pop-up blockers out there: there is a reason why they are so popular.

Ad networks that use pop-ups:

• Tribal Fusion
• PayPopup
• PopupAd
• Adversal

20. Audio Ads

Also called PPP (Pay Per Play), this advertising method was introduce by Net Audio Ads. the concept is pretty simple: play a small audio advertising (usually 5 seconds) every time a visitor enters into your website. The user should not be able to stop it, creating a 100% conversion rate based on unique visitors.

The company is still rolling tests, but some users are reporting to get from a $4 to a $6 CPM. Regardless of the pay rate, though, this is a very intrusive form of advertising, so think twice before using it.

21. Selling the Website

Selling your website could be your last resource, but it has the potential to generate a big sum of money in a short period of time.

Market places on online forums like DigitalPoint and Sitepoint are always active with website buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that they most used parameter to determine the value of a website is the monthly revenue that it generates, multiplied by a certain number (the multiplier can be anything from 5 to 30, depending on the expectations of the seller, on the quality of the site, on the niche and other factors).

Some people also make money trading and flipping websites. They either create them from scratch or buy existing ones, and after some revamping they sell them for a profit.

Related links:

• How To Buy A Website And Flip It For Profit
• How To Sell A Website – How Much Is Your Website Worth?
• Where to sell a website? How to go about selling it?

Indirect Methods

22. Selling an Ebook

Perhaps one of the oldest money making strategies on the web, using a website to promote a related ebook is a very efficient way to generate revenue.

You could either structure the website around the book itself, like SEOBook.com, or launch the ebook based on the success of the website, like FreelanceSwitch did we the book How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.

Related links:

• Writing an ebook for your blog
• How to sell ebooks
• Processing payments for your ebook
• How to sell digital products online
• List of ebook selling software

23. Selling a Hardcover Book

Many authors and journalists leverage their blogs or websites to sell copies of hardcover books. Examples include Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Malcolm Gladwell.

While most of these people were already renowned authors before they created their website, one could also follow the other way around. Lorelle VanFossen did exactly that with her Blogging Tips book. First she built her authority on the subject via her blog, and afterwards she published the book.

List of self publishing and publishing services:

• Lulu
• Self Publishing
• iUniverse
• WordClay

24. Selling Templates or WordPress Themes

As more and more people decide to get an online presence, website templates and WordPress themes become hotter and hotter.

On this segment you have mainstream websites like TemplateMonster, as well as individual designers who decide to promote and sell their work independently.

Brian Gardner and Unique Blog Designs are two examples of websites that make money with the sales of premium and custom WordPress themes.

25. Offering Consulting and Related Services

Depending on your niche, you could make money by offering consulting and related services. If you are also the author of your blog, the articles and information that you will share will build your profile and possibly certify your expertise on that niche, making it easier to gain customers.

Chris Garrett used a similar strategy. First he created a highly influential blog on the blogging and new media niche, and afterwards he started offering consulting services to clients with related problems and needs.

26. Creating an Email List or Newsletter

Email lists and newsletters represent one of the most powerful marketing and money making tools on the Internet. They offer incredible conversion rates, and the possibility to call people to action in a very efficient way.

Creating a big list is a difficult task though, so if you have a popular website you could leverage it to increase the number of subscribers on your list.

Yaro Starak is a famous Internet marketer, and if you visit his blog you will notice that right on top he has a section encouraging visitors to subscribe to his email newsletter. Yaro generates five figures in revenues each month from his email newsletters, proving that this method works.

List of software to manage email newsletters:

• AWeber
• SendStudio NX
• PHP Autoresponder
• Constant Contact

27. Mentoring programs

People are willing to pay for someone or something that will teach them and give them knowledge (as opposed to mere information). Education is one of the biggest industries in the world, and the online landscape behaves in a similar way.

Creating a mentoring program related to the niche of your website could be very profitable if you manage to structure and promote it adequately. There is a wide range of media and tools that you can use to deliver the information, from text articles to audio and video lessons.

Brian Clark leveraged the success of Copyblogger to launch a mentoring program teaching people how to build membership and how to sell content online. The program is titled Teaching Sells, and it costs $97 monthly. Sounds expensive, but they have over 1,000 members.

28. Creating a conference around the website

If your website takes off and becomes an authority on its niche, you could create a conference around it. Depending on the size of your audience, the event could attract thousands of people, and you could make money directly from conference passes and sponsors.

via [dailyblogtips.com]

How can you make money with a website? This is a great question to ask yourself even before you’ve written a single page of your site!

You’ll find it really useful to see what’s on offer if you’re wanting to make money online. That way, you can pick and choose different programs that will suit your site in an intelligent way.

And if you haven’t decided on your site’s theme, you’ll still benefit by getting lots of money making ideas from the suggestions below.

Ideas to make money with a website

First of all we’re going to take a look at two very popular ways of making money online: using Googles’ Adsense program, and becoming an affiliate and earning commissions:

Google’s Adsense program

Making money with Google Adsense
What’s Adsense? How can you make money from it? And how much money can you make? Plus answers to a few Adsense questions.

Adsense advantages
What’s so good about Adsense? Find out here!

Becoming an affiliate

Make money with affiliate programs
Just for those of you wanting the lowdown on how to become an affiliate, what kinds of programs are on offer, and what you need to know about making money with a website by using the affiliate model.

The advantages of online affiliate programs
Here you’ll find some of the main reasons webmasters like using affiliate programs. Could this system suit you, too?

How to build a successful affiliate website
Essential tips for budding affiliates as well as a free ebook download.

More ideas coming up, including

• Tips on choosing affiliate programs which work!
• A look at affiliate stores
• Selling e-goods and digital goods

More money making ideas

Sell online auctions
How to set up an online auction business, with helpful tips and tricks. More information from Sydney Johnston’s free ebook Make Your Net Auction Sell.

And coming up – a look at resources that will give you ideas for selling your own product or services online.

Want to sell online auctions?

It’s easy – and fast – to set up an account at the grand-daddy of all online auction sites – eBay.

And the great thing about eBay is that it attracts millions of visitors wanting to buy.

So – how are you going to sell?

How to start an online auction business on eBay

Become a buyer first
If you’re serious about wanting to sell online auctions at eBay, it’s crucial that you start to use the site as a buyer.

This way you will learn exactly what buyers are looking for. And you’ll be much more aware of what’s important to buyers once you come to sell.

And once you feel at home using the site, selling won’t seem quite such a daunting task.

The selling process is quite simple
You

• decide what to sell
• prepare the information you need to give about the item
• prepare a graphic or photo of your item
• decide on a price
• list your item…
• … and complete the sale

Decide what to sell

Look carefully through the category listings
Online auctions cover a huge range of goods and services. If you’ve no idea what you could sell on eBay, take a look through the category listings.

The major categories cover everything from antiques, cameras and crafts through to sporting goods, toys and hobbies, and video games.

Each category section breaks down into smaller topics. For example, the dolls and bears category is split into listings for

• bear making supplies
• bears
• dolls
• dollhouse miniatures
• paper dolls
• wholesale lots

- and if you click to see all the dolls and bears categories, you’ll see hundreds more.

It’s worth browsing around the categories to see what’s going on.

What’s for sale? How much is it?

Check out the Completed Listings
The Completed Listings show you what’s sold recently and how much it sold for within your categories of interest. For anyone wanting to sell online auctions, this provides you with invaluable research material.

Prepare your product listings

eBay provides a host of seller resources
There’s a Seller’s Checklist which tells you how to inspect your item, take pictures of it, and write a title and description for your listing. You’re also advised to package and weigh the item so that eBay can calculate shipping costs.

There is plenty of information in the Seller Tips guide – and you can also check out Seller’s Central, a complete section just for sellers, as well as eBay University, discussion boards, Seller Tools and so on.

Consider the cost to you

eBay’s fees – and your costs
eBay will charge you a fee for listing an item – the Insertion Fee – as well as a Final Value Fee if your item sells. If you don’t sell, you don’t pay the Final Value Fee.

You pay more for your listing if you want to set the Buy It Now option, or if you want to enhance the format of your listing, for example.

You will also have to pay

• shipping costs
• handling costs – such as packaging, office supplies or storage, for example
• and insurance costs

eBay gives you the option to use their Shipping Calculator which will show buyers interested in your item the total shipping cost, bundling both shipping and handling into one charge.

And again, there are tips in the eBay shipping help pages telling you how to go about packaging, shipping and insuring each item.

More tips on how to sell online auctions

Learn how to succeed with online auctions with this free ebook
Online auctions are an exciting, modern version of an ancient method of buying and selling.

You can theoretically sign up and start selling within minutes. And eBay also provides you with the opportunity to have your own store – a very tempting prospect to many.

But do remember:

“Llike anything in life, you must master the basics and understand what you are doing. This is true if you are picking up trash or creating secret weapons for the Pentagon. No successful business, online or offline, happens by accident.”
Sydney Johnston aka “The Auctions Queen”

If you’d like to

• master the basics…
• …and understand exactly what you’re doing

why not download Sydney Johnston’s free ebook Make Your Net Auction Sell -
How to Succeed at the Net Auction Game Simply answer the question below, click “Submit” and you will be taken to the download page.

Want to know how to build a successful affiliate website? Here are essential tips on designing a website to promote an affiliate program – and you can download a free ebook that will guide you through the nitty gritty.

Top tips for successful affiliate website building

Think about your target audience

Who is your site going to talk to? Men, women, over forties, under thirties, sports fans, stay-at-homes, computer geeks or beauticians?

Concentrating on your niche audience is critical. You need to be able to read their minds and know what they think, what they need, and – most importantly – what they want.

Can you give it to them?

Consider your target audience’s wants

Visitors to your website will no doubt be looking for information about the goods or services you will be promoting. But they’re not after a big sales pitch. They want to read info from someone who knows a lot about the topic represented by the products you’re hoping to sell via affiliate programs.

Whether you’re thinking about affiliate programs that deal with topics such as

• gardening
• relationships
• golf
• laptops
• jewelry
• party goods…
• … or tropical vacations

- filling your pages with tons of affiliate links and clickable banners will simply drive your disappointed visitors away.

However, pages with advice, reviews, FAQs, picture how-tos and problem-solving articles will get them to stick around.

Your visitors will begin to think you’re an expert.

And they’ll trust you when you recommend a product.

If you really want to know how to build a successful affiliate website, you need to build a site that makes your website visitors feel at home. You want them to think that they have come to just the right place – a place that will solve their problems and give them what they want.

You won’t do that buy screaming “buy this” or “click here!” at every available opportunity.

Building a site full of information will bring you traffic

By doing intelligent research and writing pages of content-rich information, you’ll be doing yourself and your business a big favor.

You will probably need hundreds of visitors a day to your website to start making money with affiliate programs.

So if you want to get as much free traffic from the major search engines as possible, building pages with lots of great information is a very good start. Search engines like to see pages full of words and phrases concerning a particular topic. Your pages will start to appear in their results pages when surfers type in what they’re looking for – and you will get targeted traffic who will be interested in what you’re offering.

How to build a successful affiliate website?

Find out how the whole process works – from research, to building, to enticing your visitors to click on those all-important links.

Download your free copy of the Affiliate Masters ebook.

Simply answer the question below and you will be taken to the download page.

Online affiliate programs offer some great advantages to webmasters, if you know how to use them to their full potential. It’s a bit of a learning curve – you can’t expect to start earning money overnight with affiliate programs. Like everything else, success is achieved by testing, tracking, and constantly improving your performance.

A little imagination never goes amiss, either! Think hard about the types of programs that will suit not just you – but your website visitors also.

Here are the major advantages of using online affiliate programs:

Online affiliate programs – the advantages

They’re free to join and easy to use
At least – most of the ones I know are! Never pay to join up to an affiliate pogram. All the most reputable affiliate programs out there are free to join – after all, you’ll be doing some work on this, so why should you have to pay?

Once you’ve signed up with a merchant, you can choose from their choice of links, banners, or other promotions, and copy and paste the code they provide onto pages of your website.

You don’t have to deal with physical products
No inventory to deal with, no packing or shipping. It’s all online – just you and your computer.

You don’t have to deal face to face with customers
You’re selling something, and earning a commission. But you don’t have to say a word to your visitors – except through the words written on your website’s pages, don’t forget!

Your website is the face you present to the people who are reading your page – so that’s why it’s important to have an easy-to-read, uncluttered yet attractive website, so that your visitors will feel comfortable about clicking on links to products that you recommend.

The merchant deals with any problems
If you make a sale, and

• The customer has to change their order at the last moment
• …or there’s a problem with the product
• … or the customer wants to return it
• … or it doesn’t get delivered for some reason

- that’s not your problem! Your virtual customers are doing business with the merchant, not you.

No worries about payment
If there turns out to be problems with credit cards or payments, the merchant deals with it all – how nice!

Collecting payments can be a bit of a nightmare if you’re inexperienced in this area – which most of us are.

But with online affiliate programs, you won’t have to collect anything from your visitors, or check for fraud, or send out orders that end up not getting paid for.

As far as your payment from the merchant is concerned, you’ll find that you get full reports about your sales and commissions from the merchant’s affiliate website.

Being an affiliate also makes you part of a team

One real advantage to good online affiliate programs is that you become a member of a team of people with a common goal – getting surfers to click through and purchase stuff that they want.

Do that, and your visitor, you, and your merchant will be happy!

So – you’ll often find that merchants provide you with regular newsletters so that you can keep in touch with latest promotions, hot sellers, top ten lists, and so on.

And you can often request custom links just for your website from some merchants – they’re often only too happy to help!

Affiliate basics

You’re the affiliate – you’re the person who will represent a company, promoting its products on your website.

You’ll also be known as a publisher or partner – as you are publishing pages online with your website.

The affiliate program is a program run by an advertiser, also called merchant, for its affiliates.

The advertiser will provide you with affiliate links or banners to put on your website. These are specially coded links with your identity built in, so that when somebody clicks on your link and buys a product, you get the commission.

When your visitors click on a link, a cookie is placed on their computer; even if the visitor returns to the sales site a few days or weeks later, you might still get a commission. It depends how long the cookie is valid. Some affiliate programs’ cookies last for only a few days, or a few weeks, or maybe 120 days. Other cookies are “lifetime cookies.”

But watch out – because other programs ask that a visitor buys something on their first visit to the sales site – the Amazon affiliate program works like this. If the customer returns to Amazon later in the day, you won’t earn any commission.

You can also earn money by providing leads – encouraging your visitors to sign up for something or take a particular action – and you get paid a certain amount per lead.

Affiliate networks are big sites such as Commission Junction, Shareasale or Linkshare.

Hundreds of advertisers run their affiliate programs through these networks. This is good news for you, because you can join up with one affiliate network and browse lots of companies all in one place, comparing commission rates, cookie duration, and types of links.

Of course, you can still make money with affiliate programs that are run “in-house” by merchants who choose not to use an affiliate network.

Choosing the best affiliate programs for your site

What do your visitors want?
The products you promote should be very relevant to your website visitors. If your site is about home improvement, ads about free ringtones, debt reduction or wonder diets won’t attract many clicks or sales, as your visitors aren’t seriously looking for those things. They’ve come to your site for something else.

And they won’t appreciate having to make the effort to ignore irrelevant ads. They’ll probably go back to Google and find another site where it’s easier to find what they originally went to your site for! You’ll lose your visitors.

Finding out more about affiliate programs
If you’re a beginner and want to make money with affiliate programs, you might be wondering what’s on offer before you start building your site.

The problem is, you’ll need a website to join up – because the networks want to see that you have a site that is appropriate for their merchants!

No need to panic – because Shareasale, who I have found to be the most user-friendly of my affiliate networks, provide good info about their program and advertisers without you needing to join up first. So I recommend you take a look at the following:

A preview of advertisers on Shareasale
Here you’ll find affiliate program previews, and advertisers listed by their category, such as Gifts, Recreation, Clothing, Computing and so on. It’s interesting to see the range of programs, their commissions – and if you click the “join program” link, you’ll get further detail about each advertiser, which can give you lots more ideas, even if you’re not wanting to join that merchant right now.

Shareasale Affiliate FAQ
More covering of the basics here, from Shareasale’s perspective, with lots of info on how the whole thing works.

Can you really make money with affiliate programs?

You can only make money with affiliate programs (and I’m talking a hundred dollars per month plus here) if your site gets lots of visitors.

Here’s why.

Let’s imagine you get 100 visitors to a page about baby bedding. You have a couple of links on that page that will take your visitors to product pages on the merchant’s site.

How many of your visitors are going to click on those links?

It could be just one – or 1%. That’s a reasonable clickthrough rate for many webmasters.

But nobody’s actually bought anything yet. So now you have to imagine how many visitors who click on the links will end up purchasing something.

Let’s say that only 1% of those that click through buy something. This means that to get one sale, you have to send 100 visitors to the merchant; and in order to send 100 visitors to the merchant, your page will need 10,000 visitors. Help!

Don’t panic yet!

If you think it’s impossible to make money with affiliate programs – it’s not. You just have to be determined!

Improve your click through rate
Here are some tips on improving your click through rates to merchants:

• You can test different kinds of content on the page
• You can test simple affiliate text links, or a banner, or a widget, or whatever other links your merchant offers
• You could try comparing two “best of the best” products in detail – you’re much more likely to get a clickthrough with valuable information like that.

Higher clickthroughs often mean that what you are offering is definitely of interest to your visitors – and you are likely to have a higher sales conversion rate as a result, too – meaning that you are squeezing the most “affiliate dollars” from your visitors!

Remember the golden rule: you’re much more likely to make money from affiliate programs if the products or services you’re promoting are highly relevant to what your visitor is looking for.

So…

Write specific pages
Of course, a general page about everything and anything, talking about nothing very much, isn’t going to get a very good clickthrough rate at all!

Why should anyone bother?

That’s why it’s so important to have specific pages, talking about specific topics, with good info – so that your visitor will naturally click through almost as a matter of course, rather than feeling annoyed or put under pressure to do something.

And a well written, tightly themed site will find much better clickthrough rates than weaker, more general sites – as well as attracting more traffic from the search engines such as Google or Yahoo!

Adsense – the advantages

If you’re new to making websites, Adsense is ideal
If you’re planning or building your first website, it pays to keep Adsense in mind as an initial source of income.

Once you have a reasonable amount of traffic, you can put Adsense on your site and earn at least enough money to pay for your website costs, which is great for a start.

It’s free to use
You don’t pay anything to join Adsense or use it. All the tools you get to place and track ads are free, and there is help available for any questions you may have.

It’s simple to use
A fab Adsense advantage: copy and paste the Adsense code into your pages and you’re done. Obviously, if you’re serious about making some decent money with Adsense, you’ll be planning to build a quality website for your visitors; and you’ll also be testing and tracking your ad performance – which brings us onto…

Simple to test and track
You can test the performance of different ads. It’s really not hard to do. You simply create your ad, attach a tracking code to it, and check your reports for a week or a month to see if there is any difference in click throughs.

For example – did the ad with a blue border attract more clicks than the ad with a gray border? Or did the ad with no border at all get the most clicks and earn me the most money?

Adsense does the hard work
This Adsense advantage saves you so much time and hassle; imagine having to sort out arrangements with various advertisers yourself? Most of us wouldn’t have a clue where to start!

You can earn good money with Adsense
Here’s one of the major Adsense advantages – Adsense really can provide you with a healthy income – if your site gets good visitors. It’s an ideal way for webmasters with small, successful websites or blogs to start earning money as part of your mixture of money-making efforts.

You can use Adsense on more than one site
Once you’ve got some experience from your first site, there’s nothing to stop you building a second site about another area of interest to you, and monetizing that with Adsense as well.