Archives for March 2019

I strongly recommend you become an Amazon.com affiliate because their program is just so easy to use – Amazon calls this their “Amazon Associates” program. This means, that whenever you link to a product on Amazon (a book, DVD, etc. ANYTHING that is sold on Amazon), and someone visiting your site clicks on that link, you receive a commission from Amazon if they purchase it.

But here’s the great thing I discovered, if the person clicked on my affiliate link to a book (for example) but before they checked out, they also added a blender to their cart and then purchased both, I would get a commission on both!

Amazon’s affiliate program only takes about 10 minutes to sign up for and it’s completely free. You can sign up here:

https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

Once you’ve joined the Amazon affiliate program, there are two ways that you can use your site to generate commissions on sales of Amazon products:

1/ You can easily add relevant Amazon products to your existing blog posts or Pages.

This is the super-quick and easy way to generate some extra, automated income by mentioning or recommending Amazon products. This means that if you’re already blogging about the new blender you bought for your green smoothies, or the educational toy you gifted your nephew, you can add the product – and perhaps 2 or three more good products in the same category – right into your blog post.

Once you have your Amazon Associates account set up, you simply go to the product you want to show in your blog post and click on Link to this Page, then you can choose whether to just grab the plain link code, or the code that will have a picture of the product show as well:

Is that super easy, or what?!

For example, here’s a list of my recommended business books and you can see that they are all affiliate linked to Amazon.

Here’s a video where I show you exactly how easy it is to add Amazon affiliate links to your regular blog posts, or site pages:

Having shown you how simple it is to get started this way with Amazon affiliate links, I also want to point out that unless you are linking to high priced products, you have to sell a LOT of product to make any money this way. Also, your affiliate link is only active for 24 hours, or until the person clicks on someone else’s Amazon affiliate link!

So the more people who use Amazon affiliate links (and it is growing daily), the more important it becomes to catch people at the place where they are finished researching and are actually ready to buy. Darren Rowse sums this up beautifully in his Amazon Associates Tips article:

Another big factor in the equation of Amazon conversions is the intent that your readers have when they visit your blog. Why are they there and at what stage in the ‘buying cycle’ are they at?

I began to think about this just over a year ago as I looked at the growing traffic on my photography site but realized that my Amazon earnings didn’t seem to be keeping up with the traffic growth that I was experiencing. What I realized is that DPS was a blog that was largely writing about ‘tips on how to use a camera’ and that as a result it wasn’t really drawing readers to it who were in a ‘buying mood’. In fact a survey that I did found that many of my readers had recently purchased a camera and were on my site specifically because they wanted to learn how to use it.

As a result I added to the mix of new content on the site more articles relevant to people buying a digital camera. I wrote tips with advice on buying cameras, reviews of digital cameras and equipment etc. This culminated in a whole new section on the blog devoted to ‘gear’.

Slowly this has attracted new readers to the blog – readers who are researching their next camera purchase – readers who are more likely to click a link to Amazon and who once there are more likely to make a purchase.

This is where search traffic can convert with affiliate programs – ie when you’re writing content that people in a ‘buying mood’ are searching for.”

I use Amazon affiliate links in my blog posts, but I make very little revenue from them. I don’t mind though, as I consider it a service to my reader to show them exactly what product I’m talking about.

If you do want to derive the bulk of your income from Amazon referrals, then understand you will have to experiment and test quite a bit to find out what works. Read through the different options below and then also check out Darren Rowse’s article series on the topic – before you decide whether to base your site on this method.

In earlier days, it was more common to make more than $1,000/month from an Amazon affiliate site. But now, you have to work pretty diligently to make more than $100/month, so you may choose to focus on individual product affiliate programs (where the link is valid for 30 days or longer). This is how my kids average $200/month from affiliate sales (with no ongoing promotion or blogging) on their RadiationEducation.com site – by linking to two independent stores.

2/ You can also base your entire site monetization around Amazon products

Featuring Amazon products and getting your site visitors to purchase from Amazon (and then you receive a commission) might also be the ONLY way you make money from your site. You might choose this option if your site topic aligns nicely with one or two Amazon product categories.

In that case, you might just want to focus on blogging and videos to provide value, build relationship and trust, and get your search engine rankings (where Google or Yahoo will list your site in search results) and then generate your income from Amazon sales.

I can see this model working nicely for websites based around topics like cooking, baking, crafts, gymnastics, hockey, health, dental health, sports performance and nutrition, etc. Basically, any topic or niche where Amazon carries a good number of products related to, or useful to that niche. But remember, you must link to high priced products, or it will be very difficult to generate enough money from your Amazon links.

But always keep in mind the golden rule: GIVE away help, solutions, hope, entertainment etc. And then your shop is just one section of your site – not your entire site! Firstly, because you will never be successful competing directly with Amazon, or Zappos, or any other big retailer. But also, because your shop is composed of affiliate products, even Google requires that you give value to people or they will give you a low search engine ranking, or ban you entirely. This short (less than 2 minutes) but sweet video explains exactly how Google views your shop site and what you need to do to keep Google happy:

So let’s say you like the idea of deriving much or all of your income from Amazon affiliate sales – and don’t forget, you can always start with this model and then change it as you develop your own products and programs – how exactly do you set up your site to provide this?

Depending on your budget, you could use a free WordPress theme like this one, called Magazine Basic, whose layout functions nicely as a shop:
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/magazine-basic

Here’s what the Magazine Basic WordPress theme looks like when it’s used as a store for Amazon products:

You would then either manually add the products one by one, or a faster way is to use a paid plugin like WP Zon Builder.

A good WordPress Amazon integration plugin will allow you to build a stand-alone store in minutes, like Alex does in this video where he shows you how he built a site in about 10 minutes using WP Zon Builder and his own design. This video is also valuable because it shows you how to set up an Amazon affiliate site in a way that gives value to visitors, and doesn’t just hawk product:

Or, you can purchase a WordPress theme for your blog site that is specifically geared to selling Amazon products and has nice graphics and design already included. Do a keyword search for “wordpress themes for amazon affiliates”. Some popular ones are Azon Profit Store, WP Zoner, Candyzon and ProReview.

Keep in mind there are two elements here needed to have an Amazon storefront site:

• The WordPress Theme used to display the products
• The WordPress plugin used to integrate with Amazon to automatically grab and display the products with your affiliate link

You can use a free theme and a free plugin. Or you can use a paid theme and a paid plugin. Or any combination of each.

As an example, a great step-by-step free tutorial showing you how to set up a store using the free theme Magazine Basic is here:

http://winkpress.com/amazon/build-amazon-store-with-wordpress-for-free/

Amazon Storefront Types

Here are some ideas for different ways to set up your site if you want to make the bulk of your revenue from Amazon affiliate sales. Or perhaps there is another large store that you want to carry affiliate products for as well.

Of course, on each of these examples you can also carry Google Adsense ads on the site to generate ad revenue, and/or have links to other sites of yours where you sell things, or other affiliate linked ads. Remember, for all of these, your blog posts would create the traffic to your site and also position you as an expert:

1. A Stand-Alone Review Site – There are several different types of reviews you can put on your site:  your personal reviews, other people’s reviews, or YouTube or video reviews. Even though you don’t have Buy links on the site, each product you review (or related products listed under the review) links to Amazon (using your affiliate link so you get commissions), like this one:
2. A Niche Store – Amazon sells just about everything, so there are thousands of products and niches to choose from. Go shopping on Amazon and you will find many great ideas. Choose a niche (very specific, narrowly defined category) based on your top interests or passion. The Comfortable Office Chairs site is an example of a niche store site:
3. A Content or Review site AND A Separate Store Site – this would actually be two sites, with different URLs. The reason you would do this is to position your content or review site as an unbiased source of information. Many people trust information more if they think the person isn’t selling anything.

So one site focuses on content and the other on products; both work together and they point to or link to each other.

Health guru Daniel Vitalis has set up his sites in this way (although he mostly sells his own products). See the two screenshots below. By the way, note how difficult it is to read the light colored font on a black background! Remember this when you choose your site colours.

Here’s Daniel Vitalis’ main site www.DanielVitalis.com which contains his blog (content), but note the Shop Now link in the right hand column:

This main site then links to his Shop site www.surthrival.com:

Interestingly, I went back to look at Daniel’s site a few months later and he has done a complete re-design – his shop is now black text on a light tan background – much better!

4. A Content or Review site with a Store as a Separate Category – With this format, you would have a normal content site (blog, pages, posts) about your niche, and then have one Page called Store, Products, Shop, or something specific; as in this case where it’s called T-Shirts & Great Things.  Put all of your products in that section and link to them from the content areas:

Brene later changed her site from this format (above), to a format that enables her to list even more Amazon products – by creating a page called Brene’s Favorites. And on that page, she has 4 photos, each representing a category of product that she’s enthusiastic about – see the large photos on the left hand side:

If you click on any of those categories, like PHOTOGRAPHY, instead of a list of products with an Amazon affiliate link, she now sends you off her site and straight to her Amazon Storefront:

So she kind-of has a stand-alone store, but it’s not on her site. This option would work well if you had a strong following like Brene does. Brene’s site visitors are not likely to leave her site, stay on Amazon, and then wander off and forget about her. They know her, love her and will be back to her site many times.

BUT, this kind of store (which still works using affiliate links) can also be embedded in your site pages. I’m wondering if Brene knows this is possible… In my opinion it is always better to keep people on your site for as long as possible, that’s what I’ve done on my Art site, where the store is embedded on my site page called PRINTS. Note that this is not an Amazon store, but Amazon does have a storefront you can embed on your site in the same way:

If setting up your own Amazon store appeals to you, all you need is to register for your Amazon Associates account and then it’s also free to set up and get started! All the details are here: Amazon aStore.

For those of you who are artists or photographers, the store and plugin I use on my site above is FineArtAmerica.com.

We’ve also used this same plugin for another site Ian (my hubby) runs called LegendaryFootballGrounds.com:

Note: There are many ways you can feature or sell products from 3rd-party sites right on your own site’s SHOP page and I give you lots of good options right over here.

5. Niche Checklist Sites – Very similar to a Niche Site, but even more specific in that you use an effective copywriting trick. Examples: Top 5 items needed for a camping trip, Top 10 products needed for survival, Top 8 things children need for school, etc.

A site like this would also do very well with a Pinterest or Facebook page where you could share great pictures or videos – that hopefully would go viral and increase traffic to your site.

Here’s an example of a site whose niche is Top 10 everything! Note how the site is further monetized with ads at the top and right side. Personally, I think the ads are way too big in relation to the content, and I’ll bet they would increase their revenues if they put the focus more on their content:

6. A Stand-Alone Store – A site mainly dedicated to products of your choosing that you think would interest your readers. You would do blog posts about various products and why you like them so much, or why they’re the best (which would also drive traffic to your site). For example, if you were a raw foodist you may feature juicers, blenders, books, dehydrators, yoga equipment, natural cosmetics, etc. In addition to your store, every blog post would also feature one or more affiliate products.
7. Build a Hub store – Where many of your content sites point to one store site. Like spokes on a wheel pointing to the Hub. With this kind of set up, you can have a Shop link on each site, but you can also simply link individual text (for example an author, or name of a product category, eg. Chest Freezers).

OKAY! Are you buzzing with ideas for how to link to Amazon products from your own site?

Now that you know all the different ways you can sell Amazon products on your site or blog, you’ll start noticing how everyone is doing this!

Again, it doesn’t matter whether you have your site up yet or not, you can still think about the different ways you might want to feature Amazon product affiliate links…

When you read through the different types of Amazon Storefronts in this unit, did any idea in particular stand out or appeal to you? Here they are again:

Stand-Alone Review Site – Tablet example

Niche Store – Office Chairs example

Content or Review site, with Store as separate Website – Daniel Vitalis example.

Content or Review site, with Store as separate Category or Page – Brene Brown example, Jini’s art site example

Niche Checklist Site – Top Tenz.net example

A Stand-Alone Store – Garlic Health Store example

A Hub Store – different content or blog sites all pointing to one store

Brainstorm now the different ways you would like to set up Amazon store products on your site – this is an important step in figuring out the design of your site. You can brainstorm in writing, or even make a sketch(es) of the way(s) you think you would like to feature Amazon products (hint: Think about what YOU like or enjoy and then do that!):

The Required Legal Stuff

One last important point: if you are going to have any kind of affiliate link on your site, or make any kind of recommendation that may lead to some form of compensation, you are legally required to clearly state that on your site. And I’m going to make it super easy for you to do that! You can simply copy/paste these legal disclaimers onto your own site, after changing the site name to your own.

If you haven’t built your site or added affiliate links yet, you won’t need this until you are ready to get your site up – but just make a mental note of it and download the file to a folder on your computer called: NEW WEBSITE.

1. Affiliate Disclosure on Site or Blog

Here’s the short disclosure statement that needs to go on every page of your site – you can put it in smaller font at the very bottom, or in a box in your sidebar on the right or left hand side, as long as it’s legible – go ahead and swipe it (copy/paste) to use on your site.

If you are going to have your blog sidebar appear on every page of your site (other than the homepage) then you can just have this Affiliate Disclosure statement as a Text Widget in your blog sidebar:

*******************************

Some of the services recommended on this website provide compensation to [my-site]. All recommendations are based foremost upon an honest belief that the product, service, or site will benefit my site visitors in some way. Read the full Compensation Disclosure for more details.

*******************************

2. Affiliate Compensation Disclosure Page – Full Legal Text

The underlined text in blue above (Compensation Disclosure) then links to a separate page, post, or pop-up that lists your full Affiliate Compensation Disclosure.

NOTE: Wherever you see [my-site] or [my-site].com in the text below, that means you need to delete the highlighted text and replace it with your website URL.

So if your website address is ListenToYourGut.com

then [my-site] becomes: ListenToYourGut

and [my-site].com becomes: ListenToYourGut.com

Use the Edit –> Replace function on Microsoft Word to make all these customizations in a few seconds.

Click here to DOWNLOAD the .doc version of this Disclosure, making it easy for you to customize it.

Affiliate Compensation Disclosure

Some of the web sites, products, and services I recommend provide compensation to [my-site].com in the form of referral fees or commissions. [my-site].com also gets compensation for display advertisements served from Google’s Adsense network. This allows me to provide all information to the end-user for free. It is my belief that the site will grow so long as I provide the most useful advice available. My promise to you is that all recommendations I make are chosen foremost for their ability to save you money, time, or hassle.

The Legal Stuff…

GOOD FAITH RECOMMENDATIONS

I recommend web sites, products, and services on [my-site].com based in part on a good faith belief that the purchase or use of such products or services will help my users. I have this good faith belief because (a) I have tried the product or service mentioned prior to recommending it or (b) I have researched the reputation of the Provider and have made the decision to recommend the Provider’s products or services based on their history and reviews. The representations made by me about products and services reflect my honest opinion based upon the facts known to me at the time a product or service is mentioned on [my-site].com.

YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONDUCT YOUR OWN INVESTIGATION (PERFORM DUE DILIGENCE) BEFORE USING OR BUYING PRODUCTS OR SERVICES FROM ANYONE VIA THE INTERNET. THIS INCLUDES PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SOLD ON THIS WEBSITE AND ALL OTHER WEBSITES.

MATERIAL CONNECTION

Unless otherwise expressly stated, you should assume that all references to products and services on [my-site].com are made because material connections exist between the website’s owner (“Owner”) and the providers of the mentioned products and services (“Provider”).

POTENTIAL BIAS AND DUE DILIGENCE

The Owner’s opinion about a product or service may be partially formed (consciously or subconsciously) in part based on the fact that the Owner has been compensated or will be compensated because of the Owner’s business relationships with the Providers.

In some instances, the Owner and a Provider will have a business or personal relationship that does not involve the Owner receiving compensation related to products and services mentioned on [my-site].com. However, the nature of the relationship is sufficient to establish a material connection between the Owner and the Provider.

Because there may be a material connection between the Owner and Providers of products or services mentioned on [my-site].com, you should always assume that the Owner may be biased because of the Owner’s relationship with a Provider and/or because the Owner has received or will receive something of value from a Provider.

Perform your own due diligence before purchasing a product or service mentioned on [my-site].com (or any other website).

COMPENSATION

The type of compensation received by the Owner may vary. In some instances, the Owner may receive complimentary products, services, or money from a Provider prior to mentioning the Provider’s products or services on [my-site].com.

In other instances, the Owner may receive a monetary commission or non-monetary compensation when you take action based on the content of [my-site].com. This includes, but is not limited to, when you purchase a product or submit personal information to a Provider after clicking on an affiliate link on [my-site].com.

THIS POLICY

The Owner’s goal is to make your experience using this website a pleasant one. If you have any questions about products or services mentioned on this website, please contact the Owner and have those questions answered prior to making a purchase of such products or services.

Website Owner Contact Information:

[my mailing address]

Please note that the content of this page can change without prior notice.

*******************************

Click here to DOWNLOAD the .doc version of this Affiliate Compensation Disclosure, making it easy for you to customize it.

Aside from selling your own products, programs, or services, you can also sell other people’s items that fit your niche and are high quality. Be sure that you do not sell anything that does not reflect your standards of quality, or it will downgrade your reputation and garner you negative press.

Most sites that have successful products or services for sale will have an affiliate program. An affiliate program is simply a system whereby you receive a commission for helping generate sales of someone else’s products. Here’s how it works:

If you wanted to be an affiliate for Listen To Your Freedom, for example, you would promote Listen To Your Freedom on your site. This could be done a number of ways:

• You write a blog post about the program and place a banner ad or text affiliate link to the program in your blog post
• Have a banner ad (graphic/photo) on your website for the program
• Have a text ad on your website for the program, or at the end of all your blog post(s)
• Post to your Facebook page or wall about Listen To Your Freedom and use the banner ad or text affiliate link
• Have a text ad on your YouTube video (in the ABOUT video description section of your video) for the program

Then, when anyone clicks on any of these banners or text affiliate links (from wherever you’ve put them), they will go to Listen To Your Freedom.com and they will be tracked as they navigate through my site.

If they purchase (at any time) the commission on the sale will go to you. Tracking of affiliate links is done by using cookies, so as long as the person has not cleared their cookies, you will receive the commission if they buy, even if they buy a year later.

Note: Which reminds me, either go sign up for the LTYF affiliate program now, or make a note to do so once your site is up!

Text Affiliate Link

Here’s an example of what a text affiliate link can look like, from my Bluehost affiliate account:

CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM

You see how the text is blue and underlined? Hover over it with your mouse and you’ll see that it is a live link (hyperlink), if you click on it, you will go to Bluehost’s site.

Here’s what the code looks like that creates this hyperlink:

<a href=”http://www.bluehost.com/track/ infomedia1962″>CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM</a>

If you would like to change the text that displays for this link, simply replace the text portion CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR BLUEHOST.COM with whatever you would rather say.

Affiliate Banner Ad

A banner ad is simply a graphic (image) that links to the recommended site with your affiliate ID embedded in the link code.

Here’s what a banner ad can look like and again, I’m going to use my Bluehost affiliate account as an example – and I’m going to choose the same ad that Pat Flynn has on his site (we’re going to talk about Pat in just a minute), because I know that one has worked well for him:

So, the image shows you what will appear on your webpage or blog post, when you copy/paste the code onto your page.

Easy-peasy, so when I go to add this banner ad to my blog post or the sidebar on my site, the only thing I paste is this:

And then the only thing that appears on my site or in my blog post is this:

And when people click on that banner ad, they go to Bluehost’s site. And if they purchase anything I will receive the commission for it. You see how this is automated revenue? All you do is set it up and it keeps earning you money whether you’re sleeping, or on vacation, or driving your kids to school.

Begin At Any Time!

Unlike Google AdSense, or other scrolling/rotating sidebar advertising programs that could have a negative impact on your search engine rankings IF you add them too soon – affiliate ads can be added to your site at any time.

Affiliate ads or affiliate links (in a blog post, for example) are simple hyperlinks – the same as if you linked to a charity website you liked, or a dog training tips site, or YouTube. So search engines are not going to ‘mark’ your website as having a lot of ads compared to content – which obviously, is not a nice site to send people to!

So you can go ahead and use affiliate text links, or affiliate banner ads as soon as your new site is up, or your new blog is added, or your existing site re-designed.

Choose Products That Fit Your Niche

When choosing which programs and products to affiliate with, you just want to be sure they compliment what you are offering and won’t be taking sales away from your own products and programs. Affiliate commissions usually range from 40 – 70 percent. If that sounds like easy money, don’t forget that you have to work just as hard to market someone else’s products as you would to market your own.

Why do product creators give away such high affiliate commissions? Firstly, you are making the sale to customers they might not have otherwise reached, which is more money for them as well as you. Secondly, keep in mind how much commission a physical shop owner would earn off goods they sold through retail sales (usually 40 – 50 percent). The biggest difference with affiliate sales is that you don’t have the hassle or cost of warehousing, shipping, or handling the products.

Of course, some people never create their own programs or products, they simply affiliate and receive commissions on selling other people’s products. This model is similar to a retail grocery store – which doesn’t manufacture its own packaged foods, but merely sells other vendor’s foods.

Pat Flynn is an online entrepreneur who does just that. He has two sites where he sells his own programs and services, but he has another site (SmartPassiveIncome.com) where he just shares all his Internet business tips and tricks and all the sales on that site are generated from affiliate commissions.

Pat has a large variety of affiliate links (commission sales links) on his SmartPassiveIncome.com blog. These links are to various training programs, marketing tools and other people’s products or services. But amazingly enough, his top affiliate earnings are from a simple banner ad he carries for Bluehost – which provides website domains and hosting. His own products on his other sites generate him roughly $6,000 per month, but just his Bluehost affiliate commissions generate him $30,000 per month. Note how his Bluehost affiliate banner is the same one I used in my example above:

Now granted, Pat’s blog has a ton of traffic (visitors to his site) as he provides stellar content and has been doing it for many years, and he also links to Bluehost in some of his blog posts. But it just goes to show that you never know what will generate you the most income until you try it and see. So don’t be afraid to test out products and services that you think might fit with your site visitor’s needs or interests.

You can either find good products to affiliate with by doing keyword searches on your niche, or search for companion products you think your niche might like. When you find a good website, test their product and if you like it then sign up for their affiliate program. Or you can use an affiliate program warehouse, like Clickbank.com and search there for products or programs your site visitors might be interested in.

If you want to carry ads for a variety of online merchants, then ShareASale is a good place to start. ShareASale requires you to only register once and you can then host ads for companies like Adidas, Craftsy, Mens Trunk Club, Gymboree, etc. Here’s how simple it is:

Affiliate Link To Stuff You Use

Another great way to choose which products or programs to affiliate with is by simply recommending the items that you use yourself!

Let’s say you do a blog post on your great new blender – then show a picture of the blender, which is linked (via your affiliate link) to the shop where your reader can purchase the blender.

There are many stores that cater specifically to very targeted niche markets; like art stores, saddle shops, knitting stores, fishing gear, bike racing, longboarding, the list is endless. Since this is your area of passionate interest, you likely already know the best online shops to purchase from. So simply sign up for an affiliate account. Don’t be afraid to email the site admin and ask if they have an affiliate program – as many do not make it obvious.

Here’s a great example of an artist, Nowlenn Petitbois, who has an affiliate account with a huge art shop (DickBlick.com) and here you can see she has done an excellent tutorial video and then has all the products listed that she used in the video – and each product is an affiliate link:

Another way to feature products is to have a ‘favorites’ or ‘stuff I love’ page. Again, this is where you feature all the items that you use often, or that have made a big impact on you – things that are worth sharing.

Again, these things will be niche-specific, but they can also be your favorite books or favorite music, your favorite custom boot manufacturer – anything that is really personal or specific to you. This is your tribe, remember? They want to know personal stuff about you, and they also want to emulate you.

Kelly Rae Roberts is an artist who has sold over $10 million worth of retail products (via licensing deals) in the last 3 years and here’s how she presents her mix of favorites – the affiliate links are split between Amazon.com and DickBlick.com. Note how she has written a little blurb next to each one, explaining how she uses it, or why she loves it – this makes her list useful and valuable, not just salesy:

When you’re ready to actually create a list of favorite or recommended items like this on your blog, be sure and check out these detailed how-to instructions: How Do I Feature a List or Recommended Items on My Blog?

Your Turn to Brainstorm!

Even though you may not have your site up yet, let’s take a few minutes now to brainstorm some ideas and ways you might want to incorporate affiliate links (free money!) into your site and blog.

Here are some questions to start your brainstorming process…

Are you going to write blog posts about your favorite stuff, or equipment you use – and then make each of the products you recommend an affliate link? What kinds of things do you want to write about?

List here the sites you can link to that have products you like – mark which of these have an affiliate program, and which you have to check whether they do. Tip: The link to a website’s affiliate program is usually in the site footer (at the bottom), or sometimes you need to email them to inquire.

Okay, now that you’ve put your own ideas down on paper, here are the other important things you need to know in order to make money from affiliate commissions.

Don’t Overcrowd Your Site Pages!

The top mistake that nearly everyone makes with affiliate links is to cram as many as possible onto the sidebar or homepage of their site.

I guess they’re hoping that if they have a ton of ads on there, eventually their site visitor will click something. But it is completely the wrong strategy. Why?

• It looks like you are desperate – please, buy something, anything!
• It reduces trust in you – if your primary message is “buy, buy, buy,” then your site visitors get the message loud and clear that you don’t care about them. You are just trying to sell to them.
• It’s confusing and takes away from the message and solutions of your site. Remember the golden rule; always GIVE value first. Give help, give solutions, give hope. People buy from people they trust or feel a connection to.

Too many affiliate links also means there are a dozen ways people can leave your site and go engage with someone else’s site – who may have a better customer funnel than you. If that’s confusing to you, think of it this way – you do want to make sales with your ads and affiliate links, but it’s just as important to keep your site visitors engaged with YOU and your site. If you put too many ads on your site, you run the risk of them getting distracted on other sites, and spending their money there instead of with you.

Take the example of Pat Flynn I gave you above – this is a guy who has a huge amount of daily traffic, yet he has only 4 affiliate links (banners) on his blog. For myself, I don’t have any affiliate links in the sidebar of my Listen To Your Gut site: all my affiliate links are inside my blog posts – so I am always giving information and value, and then the referral to purchase or learn more.

This is because I already sell 300+ products of my own on that site! I don’t need or want to send people away to other sites to buy, unless it’s for specific things that I have no intention of providing myself. But even on a site like that – you still have to keep the same principle in mind, of not overcrowding and looking too selly.

Let me give you an example from a test we ran on our Shoppe. Even though this is my site shop – which is obviously meant to sell product – the helpful information still needs to take precedence over anything else. And I’m going to tell you exactly how we tested and discovered this fact!

Previously, a product page in our Shoppe looked like this – note how the product information is right there, along with a “Jini Says” tab for my personal notes on the product:

Then we were approached by a company who guaranteed an 8-12% increase in sales for a 30-day trial period – or our money back. This company said they increased store sales by adding recommendation sidebars and scrollbars, like “customers also bought…” or “our customers also viewed…” So we said, sure, let’s test it.

So after installing their ‘recommendation’ sidebars and scrollbars, here’s what that same product page looked like:

What do you think?

And do you think sales went up or down?

First let me tell you what I thought when I viewed the changes:

“It just looks to me like one giant advertisement. I FEEL: sell, sell, sell! It is confusing. There is way too much stuff competing for my attention on this page.

I know what I want, that’s why I clicked on the MucosaHeal, but WHERE is all the info about MucosaHeal??

Ads for other products is NOT what sells our products. Information/education is why people buy from us – and that is now not the focus AND requires effort to find.

HOWEVER, I do like the “Our customers also viewed…” sidebar. I think that is interesting, does not distract from the product and actually adds to the page.

So, my recommendation would be to:

– Move the “Our customers also bought…” scrolling window to the end of the product description – way down at the bottom of the page.

– Keep the sidebars on the right and left as is.”

Well, those were my thoughts, but it’s always good to test your views and assumptions, so we let the shop run for 2 weeks like this first.

Then we looked at our sales for the two weeks before we made the changes, versus the two week period with the ‘recommendation’ elements as you see above. Let me tell you what we analyzed in order to determine whether this new format worked, or not.

Sales Metrics

Now, in order to determine if sales go up or down, you don’t just look at the dollar amount sold. Because your site traffic (people coming to your site) may be higher one week than the next, or higher in one month than the other. Instead, you look at your customer conversion rate. This means, that out of all the people who viewed your shop, what percentage purchased something?

Well, after we switched to this ‘recommendation’ format, sales decreased. Our conversion rate dropped from 11.23% to 6.73%. This means that with our original product pages, 11.23% of people who came to our site purchased something. With the new product pages – which featured all of the recommendation elements – only 6.73% of the people who came to our site purchased anything! In addition, overall sales figures (the dollar value of goods sold) dropped slightly from previous levels.

So remember, that when you are assessing the effectiveness of a sales or marketing strategy, you need to look at both metrics to get an accurate picture of what the effect actually is: You need to look at overall sales figures and sales conversion rates.

But we didn’t just can the service, we first deleted the big scrolling window of products from the middle of the page, but kept the sidebar recommendations, to see what effect that would have. Our conversion rate went back up again and even increased a few points. This showed us that it was worthwhile having the recommendations in the sidebars, but NOT where they detracted from the main information people were looking for.

That’s why I advise you to not overuse affiliate banners and ads, but keep them relevant to the information you are giving and don’t cram too many on your page. Or, place the ads at the bottom of the page or blog post – like Nowlenn Petitbois did in the example above. And speaking of Nowlenn, did you notice how she didn’t just give the name of the product and hyperlink? But rather, she gave the name and showed a picture of the product. Remember that visuals are always more appealing than just text – Kelly Rae Roberts did the same thing, and so did I in the screenshot of one of my blog posts I showed you at the very beginning of this unit.

Always select your ads or product promotions to appear somewhere that doesn’t distract from your content, or become annoying, or make your site look cheap and cluttered. Here’s a video from experienced AdSense user, Darren Rowse, where he shares some of his testing and experience. His same advice also holds true for any kind of affiliate ads:

Never be afraid to test things! Just make sure you keep accurate records before, during and after. Do you think Pat Flynn tested a lot of different ways to present his affiliate banners on his site? You bet he did!

Sure you can often shortcut your testing by looking at sites that are similar to yours and very successful and then just copy them – swipe away! But there will come a time when you start to wonder if something else might work better, and it’s always a good idea to test when you feel a nudge in a certain direction.

Okay, now let’s move into our next possibility; aside from affiliating with sites you love and buy from yourself, an easy way to get started with affiliate programs is to sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program.

Once you have set up your YouTube channel and uploaded a few videos, you can choose to have advertisements added to your videos – for which you get paid based on the number of views or clicks. When you add advertisements to your videos, you get to share in the ad revenues generated.

You can choose whether the ads are full-screen and play before your video starts (don’t do this unless you have very strong content to hold people so they don’t get annoyed with the ad and click away), or just appear as a banner along the bottom of your videos. You can also choose to have ads appear on your channel page.

These ads are controlled by the Google AdSense program, so you have some control over which types of ads can appear on your videos and channel, which is nice.

Every time a viewer clicks on these ads, you receive a few pennies. Bit by bit, it can add up and it is worth doing. I add new videos very infrequently, but I still make anywhere from $170 to $200/month in revenues. Not bad for free money. Keep in mind though that some of my videos are quite popular with over a quarter million views. When you are just starting out, you will earn much less – but many people have figured out how to make a living entirely off YouTube monetization, so it’s definitely possible!

It is super easy to participate in YouTube’s ad revenue program – you simply go to your Video Manager, click EDIT, click Monetize my video and then select the kind of ads you want to display with your videos:

Keep in mind that YouTube changes its systems very frequently, so right now, this is what the monetization process looks like, but that may change 5 times in the next year! It doesn’t matter though, as YouTube is great at providing very clear instructions for everything.

You can see in these next two screenshots the different types of ad formats you can select. I used to run Overlay ads on my videos, since these were the least obtrusive. The Overlay ads appear in a small rectangle at the bottom of the video and you can click the X anytime to close them. Here’s what an Overlay ad on your video looks like:

However, YouTube then decided to really push the TrueView In-Stream ad format and so drastically reduced the commission for the Overlay ads. TrueView In-Stream ads are those that appear the very start of the video, in full screen and you have to wait about 4 seconds before you can click “Skip Ad” and get to the video itself. When my ad revenues plummeted to less than 50% of what I was previously earning, I decided to switch all my videos with 10,000+ Views to the TrueView ads. Here’s what a TrueView In-Stream ad placed before your video looks like (note the “Skip Ad” option):

The reason I am not running TrueView ads on my less-watched videos is that I don’t want to give people a reason to click away. If your video shows even a few thousand views, it provides social proof that your video is worth sticking around for. But when you’re trying to build Views on your videos, if you only have 42 views on your video, is someone really going to sit through 4 seconds of advertising to see if your video is any good?

On my other two channels (for my horse stuff and my art stuff) I am letting my videos get to 1,000 views before I will monetize them. But you can and should test this for yourself. Maybe monetize one of your new videos, but not the other and see if it makes a difference to your video Views.

Don’t worry, I provide plenty of instruction on how to create excellent videos for YouTube right over here.

Here is the type of content you can have in your videos that will enable you to monetize them – most of this is just common sense, but I thought I’d grab the info for you from YouTube anyway:

You must meet these minimum requirements in order to monetize your videos on YouTube:

• Your content is advertiser-friendly.
• You created the content or have permission to use it commercially.
• You are able to provide documentation proving you own commercial rights to all audio and video content.
• Your content complies with YouTube’s Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. YouTube reserves the right to disable monetization for accounts that do not follow our guidelines.

Examples of content that may be eligible for monetization

• You filmed your cat and there is no background music.
• Your video contains royalty-free music, and you can prove commercial use rights by using a direct link to the terms.
• Your friend created content for your video and states in writing that you may use and make money from it.
• You created original music yourself and are not signed to a label.

Examples of content that would NOT be eligible for monetization

• Your video has music you purchased on iTunes or content you taped off of television (i.e. you don’t have a license for this copyrighted music or content).
• You sing a cover of your favorite song without express permission from the artist.
• You edit together a compilation of content created by others. Content with violence and/or nudity meant to shock and disgust.

So whether or not you’re ready to produce videos right now, it’s definitely worth knowing about these options, as they may have a bearing on how you plan your site, business, or products.

So let’s move onto one more monetization tool that you can utilize right now, or the second your site or your new blog goes live – in fact, you can use these tools in your very first blog post! Click here to find out more about affiliate programs.

For those of you who are considering hosting advertisements on your site to generate income, this unit will explain all the ins and outs. Even if you’re not sure you want to go with this option for automating income, knowing about how Google AdSense works will give you the tools to decide what’s right for your site.

Google AdSense is a free program that you can sign up for using your Google account (also free). Once you have it set up, you can choose to display ads on your blog and/or your YouTube channel and videos.

Here’s an example of what Google AdSense TEXT ads on a blog or webpage may look like:

Text ads like this can go either at the end of your blog posts or site pages, or they can be placed about mid-way or three-quarters of the way through your page.

And here’s what Google AdSense DISPLAY ads may look like:

AdSense display ads are usually placed in the sidebar of a site. Or sometimes they are placed at the top of a site – which I don’t like as I think it really takes away from your site branding and look & feel.

So when you’re asked to select the Ad Type can select whether you want Text or Display ads. And then you also get to select the size of ad you want, whether it’s horizontal or vertical, what shape it is, and where you want it to show on your page or post.

Target Ads To Your Audience

The important thing about Google AdSense is that you can select which ads are allowed to appear on your blog or videos. You can also completely block certain ad categories.

So if you wanted your ads to be super specific to your topic, for example, cooking, then you would block all ad categories other than Food & Groceries – you could even sub-category your ads down into (for example) Baking Goods or Baking Ingredients.

But you may realize that even though your site is about cooking, people who like to cook are also likely to enjoy gardening, or perhaps use health supplements. So in that case, you may want to run a wider variety of ads on your site.

You can set up your AdSense ads to be tracked, so when you login to your account, you can see which ads are getting the most clicks and generating you the most revenue – and then you may want to cancel some of your other ad categories and just stick with the one(s) your stats are showing you work best for your site visitor.

AdSense has detailed tutorial videos showing you exactly how to do all of the things I talk about here. Or, if you have the budget, you could go on Elance.com and hire someone to set up your AdSense account for you – this would likely cost you under $100 CAD if you know how to outsource tasks to Elance.

Where Should You Place Your Ads?

You don’t want to junk up your site just to make money. Or maybe you do! Seriously, an ad-heavy strategy may work for period of time, but if you are setting up a long-term business, people won’t come back to your site for the ads – they will come back and refer their friends because of your excellent content. So be discriminating about where ads are displayed and which ads you allow.

My advice would be to always select them to appear somewhere that doesn’t distract from your content, or become annoying, or make your site look cheap and cluttered. Here’s a good video from an experienced AdSense user, Darren Rowse, where he shares some of his testing and experience:

WARNING!!

However, I strongly advise you to NOT put any advertising on your site until you have ALREADY generated decent search engine rankings and you have a good number of visitors coming to your site every day because of your interesting, informative, or entertaining content (contained in your blog posts).

Again, I speak from experience, since I tested this with a new site I set up, ListenToYourHorse.com.
Here’s what happened: I launched listentoyourhorse.com and a few days after it went live, I registered with Google AdWords and ran 1 of their ads down the sidebar of my blog and another along the bottom. I also registered with an equine-specific advertising network and ran 3 of their ads down the blog sidebar. A friend of mine blogged at least once per week, for 3 months on the site. And I blogged whenever I could.

When I checked Google Analytics after 3 months of regular blogging, I had a grand total of 4 visitors to my site!! Seriously, I’m not joking, and I have NEVER in my entire existence on the web seen such truly crappy stats for one of my sites. The ONLY thing I did differently with this site was to have the ads on it.

So then I pulled all the ads off the site, waited one month – only published 1 new blog post during that month! – and when I checked Google Analytics again, I’d had 104 visitors.

4 visitors in 3 months with ads vs. 104 visitors in 1 month without ads. Hmmm… that’s a pretty clear lesson I’d say!

So if your site has already been up for a while, you can go ahead and put some ads on there – but make sure you’re tracking your site visitors in the first few months. Otherwise, if your site is new, or not up yet, then be sure and hold off until you’re generating good traffic to your site FIRST, then you can add some advertisements and see what happens. Just bookmark this unit and come back to it later.

You can get started at: www.google.com/adsense

And get detailed instructions for how to set up and run your account here:

https://support.google.com/adsense/checklist/3044373?rd=1

If you learn better visually, then check out the AdSense tutorial video channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/InsideAdSense/videos?view=0&flow=grid&sort=p

Speaking of videos, if you’re interested I can show you how you can monetize your YouTube videos and how and when to use each kind of video ad. More automated revenue, coming right up…!

In addition to your own products or services you will sell on your site, there are a number of simple ways to generate additional easy, automated cash from your site – by offering affiliate or commissioned sales products.

Or, you can use these methods to start generating revenue right away, before your own products or services are ready. Some of you may choose to generate all or most of your income from advertising and affiliate sales – also known as referral or commission sales.

For example, perhaps you only want to offer personal coaching and you want to have affiliate links (commission links) to other companies for all your product sales. An affiliate, or commission sale is where you are NOT the one who warehouses, sells, or ships the product. You are NOT the author or publisher of the book, or CD or DVD. And that product or service is NOT for sale on your own website.

You are simply the one who recommends that product to your people. And if your people click on the web link that goes to a product (or service) you’ve recommended, and they purchase that product, you will receive a commission on the sale price of that product.

How does that work? Well, there is computer software code embedded into the weblink. So that when someone clicks on that weblink, the affiliate program software automatically knows that person came from you – so you will get the sales commission on anything they buy.

Maybe you love ballet dancing. So you want your site to consist of tutorial videos, interviews, photos and other content you share on your blog. Then at some point in most of your blog posts, you will have an affiliate link to the particular pair of pointe shoes you recommend as the absolute best, or, your favorite tutu supplier. Or you run affiliate links down the right hand side of your site for top ballet DVDs, or ballet schools, or intensive workshops.

My kids Oscar and Zara have an educational site about WiFi Radiation called RadiationEducation.com, and it earns almost all of its money from affiliate links. In fact, the kids have a number of affiliate links right on their webpages, but most of their $200/month comes from a blog post on my site that they link to (they don’t have a blog on their site, that’s why we used mine). In that blog post, we provide instructions on how to measure WiFi radiation and then carry affiliate links for about eight different radiation meters with a description and review of each. Every time someone clicks the link to a meter and then purchases it, the kids receive a commission. Some months, they can earn $500-600 commission – from only 2 weeks of work back in 2010!

That’s why I want to tell you about these automated ways to generate money before you nail down your site design – since you may find you want to really run with one or two of these and that may significantly change your site design. A few weeks after he implemented affiliate links, I received this email from a Freedomite:

This is so much fun (even if it only covers dinner – at the best spot in Ubud).

Now I get a few emails like this per month from my affiliate vendors (8 and counting) – and the amounts are increasing.

Thx for all your help!

Six months after he sent this email, his affiliate commissions were generating $1,000/month and his requests for personal consults had increased significantly. What did he do during that 6 months? He simply kept blogging great quality content – written and video – twice a week, wrote a couple of articles for community-based publications, and gave 3 presentations at community events.

Isn’t that great? Remember, automated means that the work is all in the set-up. But once set up, ongoing revenue is generated (often daily) completely automatically. You can be asleep, or sitting on the beach and your site is generating you money. All you have to do on an ongoing basis is to blog interesting, helpful, entertaining, or useful stuff a few times a week.

The great thing about these four methods I’m going to teach you is that they are all completely free to register, set up, and participate in:

• Google Adsense Program
• YouTube Monetization
• Specific Program or Product Affiliate Links
• Amazon Associates (Affiliate) Program

Each of the links above go through each of the four affiliate monetization methods in detail, so choose whatever you’re most curious about and get started!