After boosting your website’s SEO, the next step is to turn those extra clicks into dollars. The best way to do that is through affiliate marketing. In this article, you’ll learn which affiliate marketing programs are the best of the best.
But before we establish the best affiliate programs for you to use to monetize your website, let’s review what affiliate marketing is.
It’s always smart to delve back into basics when trying to get better at something.
So, What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is essentially about relationships. This can include relationships between the advertiser and the publisher, between the publisher and the consumer, and relationships between the advertiser and the consumer.
That last relationship is the key. It’s the one every advertiser is ultimately after. It’s the way to reach the consumer. It’s so key, in fact, that advertisers will pay publishers a percentage of the sale that your website has helped to facilitate.
As the middleman of sorts, it is your job as the publisher to facilitate this relationship between advertisers and consumers. The more relationships you facilitate the more money your website can make.
Now that we’ve established the basics, we can get into the best affiliate programs to leverage your website’s traffic into money.
ClickBank
Perhaps the simplest and most intuitive affiliate program on the market, ClickBank is the way to go for beginners.
You can see immediately once you arrive at the homepage how easy it is to navigate. On the left-hand side, you will see a number of different categories for a variety of products you can purchase to advertise on your site.
This variety is key.
An important thing to keep in mind while you seek out different products to advertise on your site is who your audience is. What kinds of products do the people who frequent your site want to see?
If you’re a blog about cooking, it would be wise to seek out products that relate closely to cooking. The best affiliate programs offer you this variety because you alone know your audience best. ClickBank has something related to whatever type of content populates your blog.
ClickBank also provides you a simple way to see what your return on investment will be.
These are important numbers to pay attention to. They include the percentage of the sale you will receive if a consumer is referred to a product they buy through your site.
ClickBank will also inform you of what the average amount of money you will see per sale. It also tells you how much money you will receive if the product is a monthly or annual service. For example, think something where the consumer makes consistent payments.
ClickBank also offers a number of high percentage commission rates. Sometimes, they include up to a 75% return on sale. You’ll also receive your payments in a timely manner with one or two-week deposit schedules.
Amazon Associates
While ClickBank offers huge commission rates, you also need to make an initial payment to the advertiser. This is so you can gain access to the products’ ads. If you miscalculate the number of people who will buy these products off referrals from your site, you may end up losing money.
With Amazon Associates, you can link to any product on Amazon for free and still make money from the referral. The trade-off is that the commission rates are much lower. They usually range from 4-10 percent.
That’s one of the reasons Amazon Associates is one of the best affiliate programs out there – it’s pure profit. You have access to all of Amazon’s products. This gives you a massive inventory of physical products to choose from.
If you’re strategic about the kinds of products that will appeal to your site’s fans, you can make a killing even if the commission rates are lowered.
This is a great affiliate program to try if you’re just starting out. This is because there’s no real financial risk involved. Develop your strategies with this program first. Then, start to try and take the training wheels off by purchasing higher commissioned ads.
MaxBounty
So, you’re confident in how much traffic your site is receiving. You’re ready to make the investment in affiliate advertisement. Now, it may be time to start looking at joining the big boys.
Programs like MaxBounty are set up to establish relationships between trusted and vetted advertisers and you as the publisher.
It can be incredibly time-consuming to seek out advertisers who you think would work well with your site’s audience. It’s especially tough to find those who pay a high commission for a sale or a decent cost-per-action (CPA).
You also need to avoid advertisers looking to scam you into advertising for them. These scammers won’t be wiling to share with you the number of people who you actually refer to them. You also don’t want to go into business selling a product aimed at scamming the people who visit your website.
If people see that your site works with shady advertisers, they will begin to lose faith in the integrity of your website and you will lose traffic.
MaxBounty provides you a buffer. They vet all advertisers in order to make sure they are legitimate and handle all the transactions, so they’ll know if an advertiser is trying to rip you off.
They will also do the same vetting of the publishers, making sure your website is legitimate and determining the best kind of advertising campaign geared toward the kind of traffic you bring to your site.
This comforts advertisers and attracts the kinds of companies who strive to work with legitimate sites.
The Best Affiliate Programs
With these three services, you should have a good idea of the best affiliate programs the Web has to offer.
With ClickBank you have the freedom to choose what advertisers you want to work on with a very simple purchasing model.
Simply find the advertiser that fits best with your site, find a commission rate you’re comfortable with, and download the advertisement to your web page.
It might be a gamble to pay up front for an ad, but the dividends could end up being huge.
The Amazon option offers little risk and gives you as much freedom in choosing what physical product you would like advertised on your site as possible. The commissions might be minimal, but so is the risk.
And finally, with MaxBounty you have the freedom of outsourcing the process of affiliate advertising entirely. Simply focus on building the kind of content on your website that will attract the traffic you want.
You should be well on your way at this point to monetizing your website. Now all you need to do is concentrate on growth!