Why Join?

Suppose you’re a merchant who would like to add some links that complement your products to your site: you sell Siberian huskies and you’d like your customers to have easy access to pet supplies, pet food, and dog houses. . Suppose you do have a product, but you don’t sell it directly—it’s a book or CD that sells in bookstores. Or suppose you don’t have a product to sell, but you are looking for a way to monetize your site. Any of these situations may find a good answer in affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing has some similarity to advertising link programs like Google AdSense in that an advertisement is placed on your site and links to the site you are advertising for/affiliated with. Other than that, there are some notable differences. Affiliate marketing differs from pay per click advertisements in that you get paid for sales, not clicks. There may be an application process in which the merchant has the opportunity to review your website for fit.

Affiliate marketing gives you a lot more specific choice to match a single company or group of products to your website. Alternatively, you can choose to associate with a network that connects you to an array of merchants. In addition, affiliate marketing is both inexpensive and easy to implement on your site.

What Is There to Join?

Amazon.com, while not the first to build a network of affiliates, is perhaps the best-known site of those that have done so. Besides Amazon, which is a particularly apt choice if they sell anything that you created, such as a book, you can join an affiliate program for almost any kind of product you can think of from credit cards to computers to food & wine to travel. The key is to forge a close link between your content and the niche market that you want to connect with.

Affiliate networks include CJ, Commission Junction, which features advertisers such as Dell, the Apple Store, Expedia.com, Staples, and Best Buy, and Hewlett Packard. LinkShare include publishers such as iTunes, McAfee, at&t, Macy’s, Office Depot, 1-800-flowers.com, and Orbitz.

What to Consider

You may gather ideas before you begin your research into affiliate possibilities by visiting the sites of those you consider competitors to see the choices they have made. This gives you the opportunity to see what a program looks like in situ before making a choice.

Also, before you choose, research the company’s history and think about the linking options provided. Also consider how you would provide valuable content connected with  the product. If you’re an avid traveler, your accounts of your travels might be the key to connecting with a travel agency. If you have an encyclopedic knowledge of wine, encyclopedia-style articles might be the content that you need.

As you consider the commission rate and payment guidelines, be aware that there are two standards for commissions: one tier and two tier. One tier programs, as you might expect, pay a commission on each sale at one level, no matter the number of sales. A two tier affiliate program can be structured in various ways, so check to see exactly what the tiers are, and don’t make assumptions.