I’m an affiliate whore. I love them. It’s the easiest way to make money online that I’ve ever found. However, it took me a bunch of reading and about $100 in books to figure out how to actually make money from affiliates. And I’m still working on learning! Here is an ‘affiliate primmer’. If you want to make good money online you’ve got to learn how to use affiliates well.
What are affiliates?
Affiliates are companies that sell products and who want you to get your readers to buy their products. They create the product and you advertise it through a unique link on your website that has a code in the link that identifies you as being you. When your readers click through this link and buy the product you get a percentage of the purchase, up to 50% usually. The best affiliate programs are ones where the product being sold is a recurring cost (such as a membership or insurance policy) that will generate income for you each and every month.
Why use an affiliate instead of link advertising?
Actually, I recommend that you use both. Affiliates done well will fit in seamlessly with your website or blog so that it will be a recommendation of a product not a sales pitch your readers are receiving. For dedicated readers this means more to them and will increase the funds that you receive from your link advertisements. Link advertisements are great for new or occasional visitors to your site.
How do I find affiliates?
I find affiliates in two ways. Most of my affiliates are products I found helpful first and then went looking for an affiliate program with. These are, however, the lower-paying of my affiliate programs. I use them because I’ll be writing the recommendations anyway why not make a few bucks? The more productive affiliates that I work with are ones I’ve found through searching ClickBank and Commission Junction for affiliates that meet the criteria I’m looking for. These I choose by two main criteria- if their product is a good one I will want to recommend in good conscience to my readers and if the commission scale will make me a significant amount.
How do I start?
If you have a blog or website sign up with Commission Junction and ClickBank and probably a few other affiliate programs out there to figure out how they work. Once you’ve had a good look around, choose 3-10 affiliate programs to promote on your site and focus on these by rotating them on a regular basis. Good luck!

Do you use affiliate programs? Which ones do you like the best? Which ones make you the most money?

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Have you ever thought about creating your own website? Building a website from scratch is easier to do now than it has ever been in the past, and it’s quite inexpensive. Over the next few weeks I’ll be walking you through how to create your own website and set it up to make you some extra cash so that you can take that trip you’ve always wanted. From domain name registration to public launch and building a reader base we’ll walk you though the step necessary

Our 14 day workshop on creating your first website is designed to take you from beginner status to internet presence in just two weeks. We’ll be covering the following, which will become links as we get to each one:

Day 1: Creating a plan
Day 2: Registering your domain name
Day 3: Designing a look
Day 4: Choosing your design tool
Day 5: Creating content
Day 6: Designing using WYSIWYG
Day 7: Hosting your website
Day 8: How to FTP
Day 9: Using Google Adsense
Day 10: Adding cool features
Day 11: Creating a store front
Day 12: Understanding Google PR & SEO
Day 13: When you’re ready to launch
Day 14: Forever a work-in-progress

I’m always shocked at how many people think that creating a website of any worth is a monumental task that can only be overcome by people who know extensive and foreign computer programing languages. I’m here to tell you simply, this is NOT TRUE! Each of these steps can be done in 1-2 hours a night, without any previous knowledge of computer programing languages. If you’ve ever thought about developing your own website, now is the perfect time! If you’re going to be participating and following along in our creation process, let us know by signing up below - we’ll love to see how your site turns out.

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