Bob Goldberg from Food For Thought Marketing asked me an interesting question the other day. He asked me if he should be using affiliate links on his website. It’s an interesting topic and a lot of business owners make mistakes in this area, so let me tell you what I think about this.
First of all, I need to explain to you what exactly an affiliate program is and how it works. An affiliate program is simply a referral program put in place by a website. The oldest and one of the best known affiliate programs is Amazon.com. Their program is simple. The affiliate links to an Amazon product using their special tracking links and if someone buys the product from the affiliate’s link, then the affiliate gets paid an agreed upon percentage of the sales price.
In the 12 or so years since Amazon started their affiliate program, things have expanded quite a bit. Today, there is an affiliate program for just about everything.
Affiliate programs generally fall under these categories:
Pay per sale– the product sells, you get paid (like the Amazon program above)
Pay per click– Google Adsense is the best known in this category
Pay per lead (also known as Cost per Action or CPA)– Commonly used for insurance and home improvement
Where to find affiliate programs
Some websites like Google and Amazon have their own in house affiliate programs. Many other websites use a third party company called an affiliate network.
Here are a few well known affiliate networks out there (very partial list)
Commission Junction – Offers from well known Fortune 500 companies like VistaPrint and Monster.com.
Clickbank– Downloadable products, generally hot to books and software
Rextopia– A great place to find pay per lead offers like insurance and home improvement
How to take advantage of affiliate programs
Now that you have some understanding of what affiliate marketing is, should you use it on your website? Well, yes and no…
Let me explain. You should only use affiliate links if it adds value to your website and does not cause distractions. You should not use affiliate banners on your business website. Only use text links. Google Adsense is a bad idea in almost all cases as well.
However, if you are blogging and you happen to mention a product or service that you like and use, why not get paid for it? Just use a simple text link to the site you are recommending inside of your blog post.
Another area to make money with affiliate marketing is through your unqualified leads. For example, an insurance agent could send leads outside of his area to an insurance affiliate program. Other industries that have local territories like home improvement can also use affiliate programs to refer out non-local leads that would otherwise be dead leads.
You could also use affiliate programs for people that simply don’t qualify or can’t afford your product or service. An example of this is a mortgage broker recommending a credit repair book to someone who can’t get a mortgage due to bad credit. The broker makes some money and the prospect is helped as well.
I hope you got some ideas from these tips and as always, feel free to post your comments below.
Reprinted from the Dayton SEO Services blog