Affiliate Programs For Your Website: Getting Started

If you run your own website or blog and have started to see a leap in traffic lately, you should consider joining an affiliate program. Affiliate programs offer a way for you to monetize your website and generate a source of passive income. Why not earn some extra change for all of your hard work?

Affiliate Disclosure : Our blog may contain affiliate links of which we receives a small commission if you buy something through one of those links, but the price is the same for you not a penny more. We only promote those products or services that we have investigated and truly feel deliver value to you.

What is an Affiliate Program?

If you operate a content-driven website, affiliate programs are a great way for you to maximize your blog’s income potential. Affiliate programs, also called associate programs, are fairly simple to integrate into your website and require little maintenance.

So how do you earn money from an affiliate program? Affiliate programs are becoming an increasingly powerful online marketing concept. These programs allow a merchant to advertise their product in a wider variety of places (extending their marketing reach) while rewarding affiliates monetarily for each conversion.

Affiliate programs reward affiliates based on a few different conversion types including: pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-sale. A website visitor must make different actions based on the advertisement’s conversion type before an affiliate will see any payment. Let’s look further at each conversion type.

• Pay-per-click: Pay-per-click ads pay affiliates based a predetermined PPC rate. To count as a conversion, a website visitor need only click an ad to be carried to the advertiser’s landing page- regardless of whether or not a sale or other event is made.
• Pay-per-lead: A pay-per-lead ad requires a specific conversion event to be made before the affiliate sees their slice of the pie. This typically includes completion of a sign-up form, file download, or completion of a contact form for use in creating an email marketing list.
• Pay-per-sale: Pay-per-sale ads typically offer the highest commission rate for affiliates but are a little harder to convert. To count as a conversion, your website visitor must click on a merchant’s advertisement of a product and complete a sale for you to be paid.

How to Pick the Best Affiliate Program For You

If you sign up as an affiliate, you’ll want to think like your website’s visitors. For best results, it’s important to ask yourself a series of questions before deciding on the right affiliate program for you. If you take a strategic approach in choosing which affiliate programs to integrate into your website, you’ll see higher rates of income. So ask yourself:

• What kind of content you produce on your site?
• What types of content bring visitors back?
• What kinds of content does your audience like to see?
• What kinds of products would your audience be likely to consider purchasing?
• What questions/information does your audience likely search for online?

Once you answer these questions, you’ll be prepared to seek out the affiliate program most likely to offer a return on your investment. By identifying your audience’s interests, you’ll be more likely to see conversions being made no matter the advertisement’s type. This is especially important in the case of pay-per-sale ads (the most profitable affiliate program type).

What Are the Best Affiliate Programs For Bloggers?

You may be asking yourself which affiliate program will be most successful on your website. Every affiliate program differs from the next. You should consider the in’s and out’s of each affiliate program for the most success. Another factor to consider when choosing an affiliate program is commision rates. Here are a in-depth look at a few of our favorites along with their commission rates.

Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program, known as Amazon Associates, is one of the most popular affiliate programs out there. Bloggers can earn up to 10% in advertising fees when signing up as an Amazon affiliate.

This affiliate program is especially useful if you run a tech blog or a product review website. You simply choose from the large catalogue of over 1 million products sold on Amazon and advertise that product on your site via a link. Amazon Associates is one of those pay-per-sale affiliate programs meaning your website visitor must click on the link and purchase the product before you see a return.

Best of all, even if you advertise one product and your visitor clicks your link and then ends up purchasing a different product, you’ll earn a commission on whichever item they buy after being directed to Amazon through your link. It may be a bit more difficult, but the higher commission rates are worth it. 

HostGator

If your website or blog is geared towards educating the public on setting up their own blogs, creating their own websites, or anything within the social media marketing/online marketing space, HostGator is a great affiliate program to consider.

HostGator’s affiliate program is a pay-per-lead conversion type which is a bit easier to get your website visitors to follow through with. Chances are, if they’re already on your blog and want to learn the in’s and out’s of setting up their own website, they’ll be likely to sign up for HostGator’s web hosting services. That’s all that HostGator requires- your visitor must click your affiliate link and sign up for HostGator and you can earn up to $125 per qualifying sign-up. That’s not a bad commission rate and that extra change can really add up.

Jvzoo

Jvzoo is an affiliate program that you can use to sell a variety of different digital products and earn a commission. Jvzoo is one of the most user-friendly affiliate programs on our list as it even comes with its own tools and training to help you get started.

 Using Jvzoo Academy, you can learn the best ways to sell their available digital products to your audience. This training is free upon signing up as an affiliate but will be $27 a month thereafter. Jvzoo’s affiliate program has a detailed Tracking and Statistics interface so that you can easily track your earnings.

Jvzoo’s typical commission rates earn you from 30% to 75% per sale. What makes Jvzoo really special, though, is that they’ll continue paying you for products that your visitors buy if they have recurring billing. That’s money that can really stack up!