Jane May Blogs

If you are new to the blogging world you might not be familiar with the world of affiliate marketing.  Most top bloggers and websites have some sort of affiliate program where they sell or promote other peoples’ products.  Why would someone want to sell someone else’s products?  To earn money online of course! 

For example, you are in the market for a gym membership.  You don’t want to go directly with the gym because they charge you an arm and a leg for a year membership.  You do what any intelligent person would do, research online.  It so happens that your research brings you to my health website where I offer a year gym membership for 50% off of a normal gym membership price.  You like the offer, so you click the link to the offer from my website and purchase a year membership.  That is called an affiliate sale. 

I personally may not sale direct gym memberships, but I find an affiliate program that I can promote on my website and I get paid a commission off of that sale allowing me to earn money online.  There are different types of affiliate marketing that you can find on the internet specific to your niche.

The two major ways to promote and refer people to different products to earn money online are: 

Pay Per Lead (PPL): Whenever you can promote a product that generates a lead or a signup to something, you get a payout for this lead or signup.  You will hear around the internet it being referred to as Cost Per Acquisition or CPA. This is a simple process because it can be as easy as getting someone to sign up to a newsletter or enter a drawing to win a prize.  The payout ranges from $0.50 to well above $100 promoting the right product.  You will have more of a challenge trying to push products that will generate higher returns because of the uniqueness of the product.

Pay Per Sale (PPS): You are paid when someone you refer makes a purchase. This method of affiliate marketing generates the highest payout, but it’s the hardest one to convert. There’s no range on this type of marketing, it just depends on what commission the advertiser pays & how expensive the product is.  PPS is the toughest affiliate marketing method, but it will be the most rewarding with higher returns.

Now that you’ve had a crash course on the basics of affiliate marketing, take some time to reflect and think about how you can use affiliate marketing on your own websites to generate income.  If you just started a blog, concentrate on the content and focus on this later.  If you have had your blog up for a few months now and are starting to generate some traffic, then consider the above methods and find the right affiliate for your niche.  You don’t want to sale gym memberships on a technology website (despite many technology readers needing it)  :-)  You want to promote products that you believe in, that you have used, and would benefit your readers.  If you sell a crappy product to your readers, you’ll only have a mob full of angry people chasing you down.