I’ll bet you have read a lot of headlines that sound 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. However, when you were done with the article, you might have thought YOU couldn’t do it… that won’t make money; I won’t promote that, I can’t do that, write about that, endorse that… or whatever that! IT WILL RUIN MY ONLINE BRAND!

Well, that isn’t necessarily so. 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 benefits don’t stop there. You also don’t have to create any marketing materials – those are all created for you by the affiliate program owner.

Another advantage is that you don’t have to manually keep track of ROI or conversion rates. Most outstanding affiliate programs will provide the members with a login to a sophisticated affiliate management tool that is based on one of the leading affiliate software programs. Software programs like these will enable you to check how your ads are doing and what your commissions are.

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 experts recommend that you look for high percentages. My preference is for affiliate programs that offer high ticket items and pay large commissions. This affiliate program for promoting 30/60/90 day sales plan templates gives you the opportunity to earn almost $50 per sale.
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 adult content movies on a site that is dedicated to toys for toddlers. 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 powered by a fully-featured affiliate marketing software program, you can infer that this is a serious affiliate program. Personally, I wouldn’t waste my time marketing affiliate products that aren’t managed with affiliate software. 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. Website owners 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 pay you on time and deal with you fairly. If you can find a bio, picture, and phone number of the website owner, chances are they will behave legitimately. You will also be able to search the Internet to find any complaints about them or 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. You should use the similar criteria when evaluating affiliate websites. If the website owner doesn’t have a support system in place – something like a ticket system or help desk software – then they probably don’t care about their customers. If they do, then you can be fairly sure that they are trying to keep customers happy. If they AREN’T keeping customers happy, their poor service will reflect poorly on you, and tarnish your online brand.

Here are a couple of affiliate programs 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/