Discover the quickest and easiest way to build profitable affiliate / adsense websites

How to earn money from your web site.
Which affiliate programs really work?
What should you look for in an affiliate program?

There are now literally thousands of affiliate programs to choose from - but which ones REALLY earn money and what should you look for in an affiliate program?

The first rule is that you should either choose an affiliate program that closely matches the theme of your site OR create a new site (or mini-site) constructed around an affiliate program. For example, if your site is about Lord of the Rings - then featuring movie posters from AllPosters is likely to be an ideal choice. The second option is to build a new page or pages around a theme to match an affiliate program - for example you could join the Look Better Online and Amazon affiliate programs and then construct a site about dating, love and relationships with pages for reviews of personal ads sites, dating advice articles, tips on writing a good ad, safe dating advice, reviews of books about romance, dating and relationships, etc. Other programs are suitable for a wide variety of web sites - for example All Posters has thousands of posters and art prints so there is a good chance they have something which will match the theme of your site, or you could create a niche mini site for movie posters, landscapes, music posters for specific bands or whatever. When creating a page, think about how people will search for the products on that page, for example if they are looking for "gift ideas for a Wedding" you could feature some good gift suggestions and product links to where they can order the gifts online.

You should also make sure that the affiliate program you join is offered by a company who treat their affiliates honestly and fairly; offer 100% accurate tracking of your sales and commissions and answer queries promptly and efficiently. It is also essential that the company with which you have an affiliation offers a high quality product or service that you would be happy to use yourself! Online reputations are hard won and easily damaged - so make sure that you only recommend products and services to your customers that you would be happy to purchase yourself. Some of the best affiliate networks are those started by affiliates themselves, for example MaxBounty in the USA and PaidonResults in the UK. Affiliates have the advantage of knowing what works from the perspective of an affiliate and are also likely to ensure that payouts are fair and tracking is reliable.

Other things to look for in an affiliate program include the opportunity to earn a residual income - this means rather than just getting paid once for a sale, you get an ongoing commission either on each new purchase made by a customer you introduce or in the case of a service like web hosting you get a recurring monthly commission. A good example of an affiliates program which offers recurring residual income is Web Wizards Webhosting where you get 25% commission on monthly hosting fees every month, as long as the customer keeps using the service, of course. Other programs offer 'lifetime commissions', which means that you earn a commission on every item bought by that customer in future instead of just on their first purchase. An example of this type of lifetime commission affiliation is Ken Evoy's 5 Pillar affiliate program, while good UK examples of residual income affiliate programmes are the Prezzy Box (Gifts); Designer Box (Home Decor); Mobiles UK and Gadgets Merchants at Paid on Results.

A decent rate of commission is also an important consideration - it will take a lot of sales to make decent money from a rate of just 2 or 3 percent! High payers include Dish Network Satellite TV who pay $50 for each sale made via your links and AllPosters, who offer up to 30% commission on a sliding scale (from 25 to 30%), so the more you sell the more you are rewarded. A good conversion rate is also essential - at least 1 or 2% of people you send to the merchant should convert into buyers (ie: 1 or 2 sales for every 100 clicks). Obviously this varies according to the product or service and also depends on how good you are at 'pre-selling' what is on offer so that your visitors are ready to buy when they click through to the merchants site. Good affiliates provide useful, impartial information on products - perhaps comparing and recommending certain products as better than others to help their visitors decide what to buy. Reviews can work very well too - point out the good and bad aspects of a product or service in an honest and unbiased way. If your review comes to the conclusion that overall the product/service is worth buying, this approach can be far more effective than the 'hard sell, this is the best thing since sliced bread' approach which can put people off! Remember, people mainly search the internet for information; so good, helpful content will 'add value' to your website, encouraging repeat visits. Focus on the benefits of a product or service - whats in it for them (the buyer) - will the product make them healthier, save them time by automating dull tasks, save them money, make them or their home look more stylish...you get the idea.

How much can you earn from affiliate programs? Well, not only do a large number of people earn enough to make affiliate marketing their full time job, but the very best affiliates can earn quite staggering amounts! For example the top affiliate at Refer Back Casinos earned a massive $167,600 in commission, while the top earning affiliate at VMC Satellite TV earned $169,300 in one month! While you are certainly not guaranteed to earn such large sums, if you can only manage to earn even just 5 or 10 percent of what these 'super affiliates' are earning, you will soon have a much happier bank manager. A good tip is to have more than one site and to promote more than one program - this way if for some reason the income from one of your big earners falls, (for example if your great number one search engine listing suddenly falls way down the rankings) you won't lose most of your income overnight. In other words, the old adage of 'don't keep all your eggs in one basket' applies here.

We have spent the past three years using dozens of affiliate programs, ranging from Amazon to ZMedia - some of them earned a lot more money than others and some earned nothing at all! Below is our pick of the very best affiliateprograms for webmasters - all tried and tested. This does not mean that you should join them all - but rest assured that by choosing 1 or 2 from the list below that are the most suitable for your site, you will be joining a proven money maker and working for a company that treats their affiliates fairly and provides them with the support; advice and information they require. We have been paid by ALL of the affiliate programs listed below, so we can vouch for their reliability. Join one or more of these top 10 affilliate programs or networks and with a bit of hard work you could soon be earning a very good income from your web site!

Top 10 Affiliate Programs and Networks

1. SiteSell and Site Build It affiliate program: This is a superb affiliate program for Ken Evoys Site Build It - an excellent all-in-one web site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing product - click here to see some examples of successful SiteBuildIt sites ). There are 2 major advantages to this affiliate program that make it well worth joining - firstly you can make residual income online because you get commissions for life on customers you introduce and secondly, when you join the program, you get an amazing free 220 page e-book/manual which shows you not only how to maximise your income from the Site Build It affiliate program, but is also contains useful advice and tips applicable to all affiliate programs. The number of affiliates is limited though - so if you are thinking of joining then do so as soon as possible! According to Marketing Sherpa, Ken Evoy's affiliate program "has set the standard for Best Practices in affiliate programs across the Web". You can earn commissions of up to USD$100 for a single sale; as well as lifetime customer commissions from subsequent sales and residual income commissions through renewals. So, if you want to generate residual income from affiliate program marketing then the Sitesell affiliate program package is highly recommended. Even if you aren't interested in joining the affiliate program, it's worth taking a look at the Site Build It Case Studies to see real-life examples of how people around the world are earning money from their SBI (SiteBuildIt) websites using a variety of different affiliate programs, as well as Google's Adsense ads. Worth joining for the free manual alone; this program is highly recommended. Discover more about how SBI can work for you with these real-life case studies of successful Site Build It affiliates and their websites.

2. Share a Sale; Affiliate Fuel and other smaller affiliate networks: Offering a mix of pay-per-lead and pay per sale affiliate programs with commissions for referrals for free product trials, information requests, sweepstakes entries and the like. If you have a website, you can turn it into extra money by giving away free trials, samples, sweepstakes, coupons, catalogs, and a variety of other offers. If you also have a newsletter these pay per lead offers can be very lucrative - for example a freebies newsletter would select relevant freebie offers and get paid per lead for offers taken up by their subscribers. Pay per lead offers can be very lucrative because people do not need to buy anything and therefore conversion rates are higher than standard programs where you earn commission on sales. The offers with the best conversion ratios are listed on the their web sites - so you can easily choose the ones which are most likely to earn you good money. Affiliate Fuel even has an offer performance 'speedometer' and a chequered flag to show you which offers are converting best! Share a Sale offers an excellent 'make a page' feature to help you find products that are relevant to your audience and create pages quickly based on those products.

   Recently launched network Max Bounty promises to offer some of the highest affiliate payouts in the industry among competing ad networks. They say that they will strive to ensure that a fair share of the profits goes to the affiliate by providing the highest possible payouts, which sounds promising. They already have some good campaigns (mainly pay per lead) and the EPC (earnings per click or per 100 clicks) looks very good for some of them; so it could be worth keeping an eye on this one. They offer real time stats, monthly affiliate payments and monthly bonuses too.

   Similar programs /networks, which are also recommended include:
   Share a Sale who offer hundreds of pay per sale merchants as well as some pay per lead offers - currently this breaks down as 650 pay per sale merchants; 197 paid per lead merchants and 11 pay per click merchants - over 800 programs in total.
   CyberBounty - small selection of offers, again predominately payment per lead.
   Affiliate Fuel - another excellent smaller pay per lead network worth considering; Affiliate Fuel pay promptly, have a good pro-active manager and often have the highest payout on offers. You can also earn continuous residual income by promoting Freebie Finder newsletter. Each newsletter sent out to your referred subscribers, will contain your affiliate links. This is a great way to earn an easy continuous base of income.

   The advantage of CPA / pay per lead affiliate programs, is that it is much easier to give away a free trial or offer, or to get people to register free on a web site for a free sample or sweepstakes entry, than it is to get people to buy a product - hence the success of this type of affiliate program. Conversion ratios (the number of visitors who result in a commission for you) can be as high as 30% on paid per lead offers, while the ratio for pay per sale commissions is usually only 1 or 2%. Good examples of high converting pay per lead offers include free online prize draws / sweepstakes and competitions and requests for free catalogues, brochures or request for further information on a product or service. Max Bounty; Share a Sale; CyberBounty and Affiliate Fuel all have good pay per lead affiliate program offers for you to promote.

   Of the smaller pay per lead affiliate networks listed above, Direct Response tends to pay more money on some offers than CyberBounty; while Affiliate Fuel can sometimes have the highest payout of these three for the same offer. Therefore it is probably worth joining all three of them, as offers do tend to vary between them and you can pick and choose the best offers for your website. Sometimes the best results can be had with smaller networks like Maxbounty; Share a Sale and AffiliateFuel - although they may have less campaigns, you get more of a a personal service and they can be a good place to find niche ideas to promote while everyone and their dog are promoting the 'bigger' merchants on Commission Junction. Less competition from other affilaites promoting the same programs means that you will find it easier to get your pages to rank well in search results, as well as cheaper to buy bids on the ppc search engines. Examples of current offers which have worked well for us on Affiliate Fuel are: the Art Instruction School Free Art Test offer [$1.65 per lead]; Reunion.com - Find Old Classmates offer [0.65 per lead] and E-term Term Life Insurance [$48 per lead!]. Highly recommended. On CyberBounty we have done well with FastWeb. On Max Bounty the top 5 pay per lead programs by EPC (earnings per 100 clicks) are The Shield Antivirus at $13.75 per lead; Degree Match at $3.50 per lead; MyInks at $14.00 a lead; Free Grant Money at $10.50 a lead and Choice Degree at $9.00 per lead. Note: you will need to own your own domain and have a good quality web site with decent traffic to be accepted by some of these networks.

   Another good affiliate network is Share a Sale a fast growing USA based network with over 800 pay per sale, pay per lead and pay per click merchants (of variable quality, but there are some good ones). They have some great small merchants which can provide lots of ideas for niche marketing, and all payments are consolidated from the programs you participate in, so that you get paid with one monthly check. All payments from Share a Sale merchants are taken up-front, to ensure that your commissions will always be paid to you.

3. Commission Junction: The 'big daddy' of affiliate networks - as the world's largest affiliate network, CJ offer a choice of over 1000 affiliate programs that you can apply to join using one username and password. All the programs are free to join - some of them are excellent and you are likely to find one to suit most web sites. They also offer very good online tracking, so you know which banners and text links work best. The site is constantly improving and now features EPC stats, a newsletter and much more. Another big advantage is that you get one payment from all the merchants you join.

   Particularly highly recommended affiliate programs at Commission Junction include the PeopleFirst Auto Loans affiliate program which pays a generous $50 per sale commission; 123 inkjet cartridges which pays a 20% commission on every sale; the eBay auctions affiliates program and the Flowers Across America affiliate program which pays a decent 12% commission on a very popular product.

4. Satellite TV Affiliate Programs : If you are looking for an affiliate program which offers a product which is in high demand and which pays a large commission per sale, then consider a Satellite TV Affiliate Program. Having tried and tested a few, there is one in particular that we recommend, having had good sales and conversions with them - they are VMC Satellite TV which pays $50 on every sale. They welcome affiliates from any country, as long as you have or can target, USA traffic and have sent affiliate commission checks to thousands of affiliates in more than 50 countries across the globe.

   Tip: Satellite is a word which is often spelt incorrectly, so you can get a lot of traffic looking for satellite TV by featuring the most common mis-spellings in your web site or in pay-per-click ads. Mini sites work very well for this program too. They also offer excellent support for offline marketing. You get paid on phone orders and can even print a custom flier to copy and distribute in your area. Here is a suggested ad for pay per click marketing: Receive free installation of a Dish Network Satellite TV system with no equipment to buy. Dish Network currently offers over 256 channels of available programming using an all digital television signal.

   There is clearly a lot of money to be made in this area, as VMC paid their top affiliate $169,300.00 in one month! Even if you only earned 5 or 10 percent as much, you would still be getting between $8000 and $16000 in commissions every month! And an average of just one sale per day would earn you around $1500 US dollars every month. VMC is the largest independently owned DISH Network/Echostar retailer and is the only company selected by the United States Government to install satellite TV service in Congress. More info...

5. All Posters Affiliates Program : A great way to make money with your website. Link to All Posters and earn 25 to 30% percent of every purchase made by your site visitors at their website. You can choose from a selection of over 50,000 poster and art print images as well as banners and search boxes. The great thing about this affiliate program is that they have images related to just about everything (e.g. movies, music, sports, art, animals) so no matter what the content of your site, you will find images to fit! It’s also easy to sign-up, track your sales, and build links because the site generates all the HTML for you.

   A good promotion tip is to look out for forthcoming movies and create pages of posters related to that film - when the movie is released you should get a flurry of visitors to your pages and some good sales too! Hint: Try IMDB.com for information on forthcoming movie releases and then create a page of movie posters for that film (using the allposters affiliate store creator means that you can easily create a page in just a few minutes). When the movie is released, lots of people will search for "[movie name] posters" and of course your page will have been indexed by the search engines and offering just the posters that people are looking for which means sales and commission for you! Some affiliates are making thousands of dollars a month with posters, art prints and photographs - and the generous commission means that this program is highly recommended. There are lots of possibilites with this one - you could create mini sites for vintage movie posters, landscape photos, humourous posters, animals (whales and dolphins are always popular), motivational posters, Americana ... for a particular artist or even for photos of a city, country or continent. Art prints also sell well on sites that are about home decor and interior design. With over 100,000 products and up to 30% commission on offer this is another highly recommended program.

   
   

6. UK Affiliate Programmes and Networks: For UK based webmasters and businesses or if you have a British audience for your web site, you may wish to consider joining one of these UK affiliate program networks. All of them pay in pounds and you receive one cheque for all the merchants uk affiliate schemes you sign up to:
   • Paid on Results - another new, small UK network - highly recommended for their proactive approach to affiliates and a choice of UK merchants, including a few offering a residual income affiliate program. This means that some merchants offer you lifetime commissions - rather than just paying a commission only on the first sale, you also earn ongoing residual revenue from all future purchases made by your 'customer base'. Although it takes time to build up a customer database, this residual income can add up to a good source of affiliate income. Paid on Results also offers access to advanced tracking features to ensure you are getting a good return on investment. One to watch. Currently you can earn residual income on gifts, mobile phones and gadgets. Other categories include merchants with affiliate programs for competitions; gardening products; jewellery and party supplies.

   • Affiliate Future UK - one of the newer, smaller networks but already has a few good merchants - examples of sites we have done well with include Play and Win (online games with cash prizes, 35 pence per lead); Advanced MP3 Players (4% commission on all sales - high conversion rates); Virgin Airlines; Ink Factory (ink cartridges and inkjet refill kits - free UK delivery, converts well) and SpeedDater (Europes largest speed dating company). If you have a business to business website or a product/service aimed at entrepreneurs, then you can earn commissions promoting Euroffice office supplies (up to 11% commission), Pitney Bowes Franking Machines (£30 per free trial lead), Business Sale Report (Businesses for sale - earn £15.00 for each new subscription), or Site Report (Find out what real people actually think of your site - earn 10% on each sale). Affiliate Future also has dozens of affiliate programs for small UK online shops in niche product categories making it ideal for finding niche products and merchants which few other affiliates are promoting. Less competition (from other affiliates and in search engines / pay per click) means more profits for you!

   • Tradedoubler is another site offering a good selection of pay per lead, pay per click and pay per sale Europe and UK based affiliate programs. New uk affiliate schemes are being added every week - so sign up now and you will get regular updates. Includes lots of household names - including BT Yahoo! Broadband; Debenhams; Currys Electrical; John Lewis; Waitrose; Dell UK; Dixons; PC World; Homebase and Tescos. Payment is made monthly directly into your bank account.

   • Affiliate Window uk affiliate marketing program currently offers affiliate programs from over 100 UK merchants - with new merchants being added every week. They are friendly, helpful and pay on time every month. Minimum payment is only twenty five UK pounds. Recommended merchants (ones we have done well with) include My Offers, Boys Stuff (gadgets) and Pharmacy2u.

   • UK Affiliates / DGM: A site offering UK web site owners (or web sites aimed at a UK audience) access to a choice of over 50 affiliate programs from leading UK web merchants. New merchants are added regularly - from the current selection we particularly recommend I want one of those! who offer 5% commission [and a 9999 day cookie!] on a wide selection of "stuff you don't need...but you really want". (A great site for gadgets, big boys toys, executive gifts and lifestyle accessories). Also sign up for the similar Firebox affiliate program. Other good programs at UK Affiliates are My Offers (60p per sign up to a free prize draws site) and William Hill (online betting - £10 per lead). Also on offer are affiliate programs from well known UK companies - including John Lewis (electrical goods), BT and Woolworths. Payment is made monthly.

   Independent UK Affiliate programs: The following recommended UK affiliate programmes are run 'in-house' rather than through a network aggregator like CJ or Affiliate Window:

   Otherland Toys sells a great range of 'Boys Toys'; Gadgets and the like. Their standard commission rate starts at 6% and if you generate a minimum of £1,000 in sales (or a minimum of £60 in commissions) in any one month your commission is increased to 8%. Cookie length is an excellent 9,999 days, so you that you will also benefit from any repeat sales.

   Also note that Commission Junction (reviewed above) now offer affiliate programs from a number of UK merchants (including Capital One, Argos, Boots, Comet, Littlewoods, Marbles, Marks and Spencer and Mothercare) AND you can select to be paid in pounds.

7. eBook Farming - Create Your Own Money-Making Information Products : This e-book does also have an affiliate program, but the ebook itself is an excellent guide to taking the 'next step' on from affiliate programs - creating and selling your own product. The advantage of that product being an e-book is that it can be instantly delivered to the customer (ie:downloaded) with no shipping costs. The advantage of having your own product to sell is that instead of earning 5 or 10% commissions selling somebody elses products, you can keep all the profits for yourself. You can even start your own affiliate program for your e-book on ClickBank and get hundreds of other people to sell your ebook product for you in exchange for a commission!

   It's a known fact that not many get rich working for someone else. To accumulate wealth, you need your own products. Unfortunately, the average person doesn't have the means or knowledge to create his or her own products - until now that is!

   eBook Farming teaches you how to create your own eBooks that you can sell online - creating an ongoing income for yourself. How to earn money from writing your own ebook - it's something almost anyone can do, and everything you need to know is included. As for the affiliate program, eBook Farming is only $27.00, so it's an easy sell and you get a generous 33% commission on each sale.

   There aren't many opportunities that come along that teach the average person how to create income producing products, and your info-products can be put on automatic pilot. Once you've created your product you can set it up so that there is very little time required to take care of business. What could be better than not having to sacrifice all your spare time to a second job to have extra income? One of the advantages of an ebook is that you can even incorporate affiliate links into your ebook to earn additional revenue - for example, an ebook about affiliate programs could include links to recommended web hosts, domain registrars and the like, an ebook on gardening could incude affiliate links to recommended online garden stores, etc - the possibilities are endless! Of course you could also start your own affiliate program, getting people to sell your ebook product for you and paying only for results. Another good place to sell your e-book is at eBook Ad - an online bookshop for ebooks with thousands of titles. As for the subject of your ebook - anything you have some knowledge of and are interested in - if you can talk about something for hours, do so into a tape recorder - have your words typed up, edit and voila - an ebook! For full details, I highly recommend reading the eBook Farming site.

   If creating your own ebook / info product seems like to much work, you can always browse through the ebooks at ClickBank to find e-books which you can sell and earn commissions on. Be warned though that the quality of these varies a great deal to say the least - you will need to be selective and seperate the diamonds from the dung as it were! (Click Bank is the internet's largest seller of ebooks, software, and other downloadable products). There are some good info products on ClickBank, but it takes some time and effort to find them and buying the product before promoting it is recommended for a clear conscience! The stats / reporting at ClickBank is pretty poor too - just a list of the sales you make and the commission earned with no clickthrough statistics. Don't let that put you off ClickBanks site completely though - there are some good info products to be found here, and the nature of the products means that profit margins are high and therefore higher commission than average can be earned on ebooks - 50% is common and some products offer 60% to 70%.

8. Match affiliate program focuses on the fast growing area of online personal ads and dating. This is an excellent affiliate program and with very little effort we have increased our earnings from it each month. Monthly payments are sent like clockwork at the beginning of each month and you get paid commission on renewal memberships too!

9. The Scholarship and Grant Guide is an excellent affiliate program offering a service which is in high demand. There are some great affiliate support materials, including a Free e-book encoded with your affiliate url for you to give away. The site is run by the same people as the Newbie Club. There is lots of useful advice on improving your sales and the product is very popular. Ideal for web sites aimed at school and college leavers or their parents. Scholarships and Grants Guide affiliates program pays a decent 25% of sales (via Paypal) and offers a 180 return days cookie. This program would combine very well with the government grants offer on Max Bounty which pays $12 per sale.

10. Contact Any Celebrity Affiliate Program: Autographs are very popular and this affiliate program allows you to tap into this lucrative market. The Contact Any Celebrity web site provides accurate contact information for over 13,000 stars, celebrities, VIPs, and public figures. They have just implemented a brand new searchable database where members can search by name, address, zip, and more. The subscription service also lists the celebrity's agent, manager, publicist, record company, production company, business contact, and email address when available. There is a wide market for autographed celebrity items, not only autograph collectors, but also ebay sellers and also those involved in fundraising. For charities and other organisations, selling or raffling items autographed by a popular celbrity is a great way to raise funds! Charities often make use of celebrity contact details to request an endorsement or other support for their charity.

    Commission on this program is a very generous 50% of all new signups plus 40% per recurring transaction. There is plenty of opportunity for getting good search engine positions from pages designed for this niche market, using names of different celebrities, etc. Although this affiliate program is perfect for fan sites, this service is also used by fundraisers, authors and other people or companies seeking celebrity endorsements and many more. Potential income therefore is high and this affiliate program is highly recommended.

    Well, we said top ten...but although not suitable for everyone, the following can be very profitable and therefore may be of interest:

11. Refer Back - Casino Affiliate Programs: Casinos, like personals have been proven to be one of the big success stories of the internet. Although not for everyone, promoting online casinos can be very profitable. If you have no ethical problems with gambling, then you do also need to bear in mind that this industry is very competitive! This is because the potential rewards are very high - for example the top affiliate at Refer Back earned $167,632 in August 2002 alone (yes, in one month!) - the next best affiliate earned $125,973 in that month.

    The advantage of joining Refer Back is that you can promote several of the most popular online casinos from one account and receive your commissions in one payment. You also get excellent service, free marketing advice and support, which in turn ensures ongoing and long-term business.

    Also recommended is the Casino Coins Casinos Affiliate Program - again you can promote several popular online casinos from one account, including English Harbor Casino, Caribbean Gold Casino and Silver Dollar Casino. A similar casino affiliate program network is run by Casino Rewards. One other casino affiliate network worth looking at is Wager Junction where you can join the casino affiliate programs for Geisha Lounge and Grand Aces Casinos and have a choice of revenue share or pay per player (we recommend choosing revenue share, ie: a share of the profits, as this is more likely to result in long term recurring income).

    Finally, in the casino category we highly recommend Captain Cooks - they pay 25% - 35% residual income commission on Net gaming revenue from casino players and are one of the best converting casino affiliate programs we have found. Commission payment is made promptly direct to your bank account. Captain Cooks also offers the ability to track traffic via specific creative and to create and track traffic via specific campaigns (for example; tracking by keyword in pay per click advertising).

Other useful resources and recommended reading:

Affiliates - Click here to receive your free copy of 'The Affiliate Masters Course'... It's a FREE intensive 5-Day e-mail course on how to become a successful, high earning affiliate. This is a highly recommended resource which guides you step-by-step through what you need to do to maximise your affiliate income. Nothing is held back. From brainstorming and researching profitable keywords, to effective search engine optimization and building Keyword-Focused Web pages, to creating profitable PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Search Engine campaigns, the course provides all the information needed for anyone to build a successful affiliate business. The Affiliate Masters Course is also now available as a FREE e-book - click here for your copy.

If you are new to affiliate programs then there are hundreds of books; e-books; private web sites and the like, all claiming to help you (and aiming to make money by doing so!). There is no need to spend a fortune on dozens of expensive internet marketing courses and e-books, but a couple of well chosen sources of information can save you a lot of time and help you to learn at least some of the techniques used by 'super affiliates'. If you are looking for some good affiliate marketing advice, here are a few suggestions. (By the way, I have bought and read all of the e-books / books that I recommend below as I am not prepared to recommend something that I was not happy to pay money for myself!) There are 3 e-books in particular that I would recommend - especially for beginners - although experienced affiliates should learn a few tricks of the trade too.

The first of these is Ken Evoy's 'Make your site sell', mentioned above. This has recently been updated and although not perfect, it is packed with useful information and for the price it is an absolute bargain. Take a look at the entire table of contents and see what you think. Or try the FREE Affiliate Masters Course e-book for lots of useful affiliate marketing information at no cost. By the way, if you already own the original edition of Make Your Site Sell, then you can upgrade to the new version for less than $10 - a bargain!

SEO - Getting to the top: If you are more interested in 'natural' search engine results and optimising your site for free traffic, then Aaron Wall's excellent SEO Book will tell you all you need to know about Search Engine Optimization and getting a better web site ranking in the search engines. In fact, The SEO Book does have a chapter on pay per click search engines too (with some great tips and advice) but the majority of the book focuses on getting free traffic by getting better web site rankings.

Finally, an inspiring, interesting and entertaining read is John Evans ebook Success Alert: Conversations with Successful Internet Entrepreneurs - which features in depth interviews with 10 people (including some 'super affiliates) who are each using the internet to run highly profitable businesses. Ignore the 'in your face' sales letter for this and just buy the book - it really is fascinating and a great read for anybody interested in doing business online.

Some useful free courses, + good books and magazines:

New Affiliate Marketing Magazine - Earn more revenue with Revenue magazine, the magazine for affiliates. An interesting new magazine with useful articles on affiliate programs and helpful tips and advice on affiliate marketing. Click here for subscription information.

PPC: Making Money with Adwords: Five Days to Success with Google AdWords - Free course via email - If you are using pay per click search engine advertising on Google Adwords (or thinking about doing so) - you need this information from Adword advertsiing guru Perry Marshall. Combat the learning curve of Google AdWords with this free 5-day email tutorial which covers some of the most important things you need to know. It will save you a lot of money, by explaining effective advertising techniques and tips that will cut your costs and increase your profits. Discover how to increase your CTR (click through ratio) - which means you pay less per click; how to split test your Google Ads; how to make the most of your keywords and ad groups; how you can get more visitors for less money than you're paying right now...and much more! Recommended.

If you would prefer a 'paper' book rather than an e-book, then amazon offers the excellent Building Your Business with Google ™ For Dummies by Brad Hill this comprehensive book covers three important areas of interest to affiliates (and merchants too!) - 1: Optimizing your Site for Google and Building Your PageRank Through Networking; 2: Creating and Managing a Google AdWords Pay Per Click Ad Campaign and 3: Creating Site Revenue with Google AdSense by displaying ads on your site. Written by a veteran For Dummies author working in cooperation with Google, this is a great resource for anybody interested in the important areas of search marketing and pay per click internet advertising. The final chapter also includes ten search engine marketing and search engine optimization tips from the Pros. Written in an easy to understand way, with lots of illustrations, it is available to order online from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. Recommended.

'Don't Make Me Think' by Steve Krug is an excellent guide to web site design and usability and the new (2005) second edition has just been published. Essential information on how to make sure that your website is well-designed and easy to use. If you want two useful books that will sit on your desk and be used every day, order Don't Make Me Think and Building Your Business with Google - both worth many times the money spent in terms of the amount of time and money the knowledge learned from them will save you!

If you are interested in copywriting for the web and creating successful online copy (and anybody writing website content should be!); then Net Words: Creating High-Impact Online Copy by Nick Usborne [Described as "The best book I've seen on writing for the Web." by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson of Web Marketing Today] and Hot Text by Jonathan Price and Lisa Price - will both help you to write concise, effective, powerful and compelling copy for your website which will help you to increase sales. Although not specifically about writing for the web, the methods and psychological principles of copywriting outlined in Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joseph Sugarman are relevant to any writing aimed at getting people to buy a product or service - including the internet. His 24 psychological triggers that get people to buy makes very interesting reading for anybody involved in marketing. Finally, your list of books worth reading should also include Robert Cialdini's fascinating Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion which has been described as "an essential book for understanding the psychological foundations of marketing".

Search Engine Marketing "is the single best publication about search engines that I have read, and I believe, that exists! Congratulations Mike, sincerely. With this, I believe you may have become the most influential writer in the SEO industry." Alexis D. Gutzman, Managing Editor, Reports, MarketingSherpa. Search Engine Marketing: The Essential Best Practice Guide - Buy the 2nd edition now at the sale price and get a FREE upgrade to the new third edition!

The next step - moving from a beginner to an advanced or 'super affiliate'

For long term success, you need to be thinking about using a combination of natural search results (using SEO skills) and pay per click advertising with landing pages. Tweaking, testing and tracking your pay per click ads and your landing pages will maximise your conversion of clicks to sales. Other good tactics include making effective use of auto-responders and newsletters, capturing opt in e-mail addresses of potential customers and building up a newsletter mailing list (building a rapport with your readers is key - the more they trust and like you the more likely they are to buy products that you recommend).

The secret to long term success as an affiliate is to build a business and a brand - rather than just focusing on getting one sale for a one off commission (which means you have to continually get new customers all the time) - look at a long term approach. This means that you will need to 'add value' - by providing useful information and content on your site and in newsletters, perhaps comparing the benefits and drawbacks of different products or providing other useful and interesting content. This illustrates the advantage of creating web sites around topics that interest you - this way you will be much more motivated to keep your site updated, add new content, write newsletters, buy and research new products, etc. What are your passions and interests? Make a list of these and consider whether any of them would make a good subject for a website - then research affiliate programs to find suitable products and/or services which you can integrate into your content to provide income. Make your site a 'must visit' destination for a topic and people will visit it, bookmark it, link to it, recommend it to others, sign up for your newsletter... and so it all starts to fall into place. Yes, it takes time and effort - but as your newsletter grows and your search engine rankings and visitors rise - so will your income, making it all worthwhile. Building a business means you will need content - interesting, informative and valuable information for people interested in that topic. For more information on how best to use your content and how to turn that content into income, take a look at the excellent advice in Make Your Content PREsell.

Also consider joint ventures - combining your talents in one area with somebody else's expertise in another for mutual benefit. Another good idea is to outsource those tasks which don't interest you or are not your area of expertise - use a site like Freelance Work Exchange or Rent a Coder; where you can post your project for free and find freelancers who can write newsletter articles or web content, copywriting or sales letter writing, programming, or whatever else you need doing. By outsourcing the most time consuming tasks (like content writing) or skills you may not have (like programming) you are able to focus your time on doing what you do best - creating high earning affiliate websites.

Longer term you may even want to start your own affiliate program - by sourcing or creating products and having hundreds or even thousands of affiliates selling those products for you. Your own product could be an 'informational' product, like an e-book or could involve setting up your own online store with products sourced from Wholesalers & Dropshippers. Some ecommerce shopping carts like 1 Shopping Cart can provide you with a full suite of internet marketing tools in one package, including an online shopping cart, ad tracking, auto-responders, affiliate tracking for your own affiliate program, and automated online order taking.

Starting your own affiliate program? Free Report and Book Extracts:
Complete the form below for your free extracts from 'The Practical Guide to Creating and Managing a Profitable Affiliate Program'. Including: Planning Your Program - Building Your Team Of Affiliates - The Most Effective Link Methods - Free Targeted Advertising For Your Affiliate Program
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The Unicorn, The Dragon, And The High-Earning Affiliate (Article) - "Finally, the promise of affiliate marketing is realized. Publish a theme-based information-jammed content site that will attract search engine web traffic. Monetize with the cream of pay per performance advertising affiliate programs, blend in additional AdSense and other revenues. Finally...build an affiliate site that WORKS. Diversify as you grow......click here to read this article in full...

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A friendly, helpful and supportive community for anybody who wants to learn internet marketing and how to make money online. Topics covered include Affiliate Marketing; Online Auctions / eBay; HTML, Web Design and Programming; Search Engine Optimization; Learn Internet Marketing; Website Promotion and e-Publishing of Ebooks and Newsletters. Lynn Terry has a helpful free newsletter too.

AssociatePrograms.com - best affiliate programs directory
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