Archives for March 2012

Creating Affiliate Links


OK, so you've been working on creating content and driving traffic to your site, as well as finding out how to find affiliate programs to promote. Now it's time to get links set up.

What are affiliate links? They are pieces of code in a graphic image or piece of text on an affiliate's site that notifies the advertiser or merchant that an affiliate should be credited for the customer or visitor sent to their site.

You can get your affiliate links from either independent affiliate programs, like Amazon and eBay, or affiliate networks, such as Affiliate Window, ClickBank, Commission Junction, LinkShare, and ShareASale.

In the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “What are your preferred link types?”

As you can see, banners and text links are the two most popular.

Based on my experience as an affiliate, banners don't perform nearly as well as text links. But I would highly encourage you to test the various link types to determine what works the best for your site(s).

Here are the topics I'll be covering in this section.

One word of caution – take it slow when adding affiliate links to your site(s).

Your affiliate links should supplement your content, rather than be the focus of your pages.

Search Engines


In the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, where over fourteen-hundred affiliates were surveyed, we asked, “How do you most often find out about an affiliate program and then join?”, and 24% responded with “Search Engine.”

Affiliate programs on Google

I frequently use search engines to find new affiliate programs to promote.

What I do is to search for the main keyword for my site, followed by the phrase affiliate program.

Sometimes the results are junky, but more often than not, I'll discover affiliate programs that didn't occur to me.