You have probably read a lot of headlines that sound similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You have may have even read some of those articles all the way to the end, clicked on some of the links and read all the information on those links. When you finished, you may have thought you wasted your time… who in the world would ever buy THAT… or whatever that! IT WILL RUIN MY BRAND!

Well it doesn’t have to be that way. 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 promote affiliate websites, you get instant access to products and services that are well supported by professional marketing materials without and up-front development costs. 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 stop there. You also don’t have to create any marketing materials - those are all created for you by the person who builds the product and is running the affiliate program.

Another great benefit is that you really don’t have to keep track of finances or money. 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

1. 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 gurus recommend that you look for high percentage payouts. My preference is to look for websites that offer high ticket items and pay large commissions. This affiliate program for promoting sales interview tools gives you the opportunity to earn almost $50 per sale.
2. 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 very effective to choose to promote affiliate programs and products for knitting and crochet products on a site that is dedicated to professional football. 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.

3. 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. If you are redirected to a page powered by a top-tier affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. If you get an email message that says ‘here is you affiliate link’ you might want to think carefully about investing any time. 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

4. 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. Affiliate program owners who tell you who they are, give you contact information with phone numbers aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They aren’t likely to try to avoid paying you the commissions that you have generated. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the affiliate site owner, chances are they can be trusted. You will also be able to ‘Google’ them to find any negative information about 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/

5. 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. If the affiliate program owner doesn’t have a support system in place - something like a ticket system or help desk software - then they probably won’t care about any problems that you might have. If they do, then you can be rest assured that they are trying to delight their customers. If they AREN’T trying to keep customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your brand.

There are a couple of affiliate programs 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/