Web Wise: Affiliate programs-little streams of revenue
If you've ever left a leaky faucet dripping for months, you've seen the effect it had on your water bill-after a while that little drip added up to gallons of water that turned into money for the water company. The same concept can be applied to your affiliate program on your Web site-only instead of losing money over time, you can gain little streams of revenue.
Being an affiliate for another company means carrying their ads on your Web site. When someone visits your Web site and clicks on one those ads, you get a little money-a commission. Some advertisers require that your customers buy a product in order for you to receive your small commission. The amount of money you can gain depends on the amount of people clicking on those ads. You can gain some steady income if you consistently have a lot of traffic.
Google AdSense is one of the best affiliate programs around right now. Once you fill out an online application and are approved, you'll be given HTML code to copy and paste wherever you want the ads to appear in your Web site's pages.
What's really cool about Google AdSense is that the ads relate to the content on your site because you get to choose the category of the type of ads you want to carry. All ads are approved by Google before they are allowed into their network. You can customize the way the ads look by choosing different colors and different styles so they can easily integrate into your Web site's design or at least not clash with it. You can filter out competitor ads, too. To monitor how much your little stream of revenue is trickling in, simply log in to your account and review your data. You can find out more details and set up a free account by going to: http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/
Commission Junction is another popular affiliate program (http://www.cj.com). I noticed that the most of the case studies on their Web site were large companies that probably receive thousands or millions of visitors in a month. Naturally those companies get more commissions because so many people click on their affiliate ads.
The oldest affiliate program around belongs to Amazon.com. Do you find yourself constantly recommending books to your friends? Why not send them to your Web site to buy those books? By setting up your Amazon.com affiliate program, your friends can click on the ad in your Web site and give you a little more revenue. Amazon.com thought of the idea of offering Web site owners commissions on clicks to Amazon.com.
Many factors affect whether or not you make any money from being an affiliate. The biggest factor is traffic. If you don't know how to bring targeted traffic to your site, forget about being an affiliate. You won't sell much lemonade in the middle of a desert unless there are lots of people wandering around your stand.
Lori Gama-White owns DaGama Web Studio in Greeley, Colorado. Developing strategic, results-oriented Web sites since 1997, Lori Gama-White and her team of Web professionals are passionate about helping people get their businesses on to the Internet. For more information, questions or comments, call 970-378-7822 or e-mail .
© 2005 Lori Gama-White - All Rights Reserved -
http://www.dagamawebstudio.com
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