How much a person can earn with web-based affiliate programs depends a great deal on a number of factors, including effort, savvy and picking the right programs.
Affiliate programs offer everything from a few pennies a click to $65 a sale and up, depending on what it is they are selling. While, upon reading this, many people would immediately think “Well, I’m going for the sixty-five and up category!” there is more to consider before selecting the affiliate program that is right for you.
Each program wants something from its affiliate partners in return for the money they will bring them. For many the “thing” they want is a sale, which means that if a potential customer clicks to their site from yours via a banner ad, but that visit does not result in a sale, then nothing is paid out. Even if the same customer goes back to their site, bypassing yours, and makes a purchase the next day, in most cases there is no pay out to you.
Some sites will pay per click, regardless of a sale, and others even give things away for free and pay you for each download, be it icon packs, screensavers, or wallpaper for the desktop.
Can I center a business around affiliate programs?
You may be reading this and thinking “well, this is all well and good, but I don’t have a website that has regular traffic; how am I supposed to take advantage of this opportunity?” There are a few answers to this question.
Focus Your Efforts
Take some time to browse the affiliate programs available and select one or two that meet your own criteria, such as profit per unit, ease of selling, etc. Once you have read the companies affiliate program information, which will tell you what they expect in order for you to join the program, you can then design a site specifically around those programs.
For instance, there is one program that sells an eBook on how to write a book in two weeks that offers an affiliate program. If you were to investigate this and decide you wanted to use this as your focus, you could build your site around the product. Purchase it yourself, read it, perhaps even write the book it states you can write, and then talk about it on the site. Become an advertisement for the product, and, naturally, include plenty of easy-to-find links to their sales-front.
Once you have your product and your site designed around it, you would market your own website by submitting it to search engines, going to link exchanges, adding it to the signature line of your emails; anything you can do to get people to visit your site. It really is a numbers game; the more visits to your site, the more changes someone will really like what it has to say and follow your links to the product.