You have may have read many headlines similar to this one above, or make promises like this one seems to. You have might have read some of those articles all the way to the end, clicked on some of the links in the article and read all the information on those links. You might have finished the article and then broken up into hysterical laughter… no way can I make money doing that; I can’t promote that, I can’t put that on my website… or whatever that! IT WILL DESTROY MY IMAGE!

Well, that doesn’t have to happen. 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 end there. You also don’t have to create graphical marketing materials - those are all created for you by the affiliate program owner.

Another big benefit is that you really don’t have to manually keep track of finances or money. Most good affiliate programs will provide the members sophisticated affiliate management tools that are based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. These programs make it easy for you to follow how the ads you place on your site are doing, and how much commission you are earning.

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. I prefer to look for opportunities where you can make a ‘big hit’ from a sale. This affiliate program for promoting music teacher websites offers the opportunity for you to earn $200 for a sale with monthly recurring income of $10.
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 too bright to choose to promote affiliate programs and products for chocolate desserts on a site that is dedicated to losing weight. 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 automatically redirected to a page in an affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. If they don’t have a ‘welcome’ screen that lets you know they are using a software program to manage the program, you might want to re-think your membership. 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. People who tell you who they are, give you contact information with phone numbers aren’t very likely to be fly-by-night. They are more likely to be on the up and up and deal with you fairly. If you can find a picture, bio, and phone number of the website owner, chances are they are trustworthy. 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. It would be wise to use similar criteria when evaluating affiliate offerings. If the vendor doesn’t have a support system in place - something like a help desk or help desk software - then they probably don’t care about their customers. When they do, then you can be rest assured that they are trying to keep customers satisfied. If they AREN’T keeping customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your image.

Here are a couple of affiliate programs that hit on all cylinders, that I 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/