Blueprint Step #6: Choose Affiliate & Advertising

We’re moving on to affiliate program selection today, and this is where things get fun.

Some affiliate selection is rather obvious, some is less so. Your best bet is to sign up for a range of affiliate services and browse their inventory for offers related to your pages. There are two important points to consider:

1) Your offers must be incredibly relevant, I mean SPOT ON relevant, or they won’t get clicked. If you can find an offer that mimics the keywords in the page, then you’ve done well.

2) Your offers must have value. That means that you have personally checked them out, gone through the signup process, and done your due diligence. This is not a requirement, but if people are clicking on your links, make sure you send them to a deal that they can use, not just one that will make you money.

That’s the point of niche sites — you’re finding a need and serving it. Yes, you make money in the process, but you don’t want to make money without providing your visitor a good experience. Keep your sites valuable, informative, and on the level, and we all benefit because people will be more likely to click.

You’ll want to sign up and browse affiliate programs at places like Amazon, Commission Junction, Clickbank, and Linkshare. You’ll want to create accounts at advertising sources like Kontera, Chitika, AdSense, WidgetBucks, and TextLinkAds.

Optimizing each of these services for profitability is outside the scope of this group, but it is something I cover in detail in “Blogging in Action.” That one chapter of the book is something that other people would sell as a full product!

• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/amazon/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/cj/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/clickbank/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/linkshare/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/kontera/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/chitika/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/adsense/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/widgetbucks/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/textlinkads/
• http://www.WordpressForBeginners.com/adbrite/

Now we’re crossing over from pure auto-pilot sites to affiliate marketing, and you know what? This is where you can earn some money. Affiliate programs like Amazon have low commissions but high conversions, whereas other programs have lower conversions, but extremely high commissions. We’re going to discuss finding those winners in the next e-mail.