Most web publishers use a CPC network such as Adsense or a CPM network
that shows banner adverts and pays a tiny amount such as $1 per
thousand impressions. I prefer to use affiliate programs that pay me a
commission for every product I sell.
Having been banned from Adsense 3 times in the past for no reason at
all I’ve had to learn how to make money without relying on Google to
send me a cheque. The reason for my first ban was that I signed up
with a site and never got round to adding the Adsense code. Then one
day I added the code to the revenue sharing program in the Digital
Point forums, quickly earned $60 and then got banned. Google didn’t
even offer an explanation. The next two bans were for starting accounts when I was already banned. 
The best thing about affiliate schemes is you can’t get banned easily
and you have email & phone access to loads of people who want to help
you make as much money as possible.
Making money using affiliate marketing is way too large a subject for
me to cover it in one blog post so I will be doing a series of
probably a few posts per week explaining exactly how I make over
$10,000 per month from affiliate marketing on various blogs.
If you have any specific questions please post them in the comments. Otherwise wait until tomorrow for the first post which is about link baiting – the first
thing you need to do when launching a new affiliate site.
The first step – link bait
The key
aspect of link baiting for affiliate sites is to make sure you don’t
have any affiliate links in your posts. This might sound strange but
bloggers won’t link to sites with affiliate links. You need to wait
until your posts are about a week or two old before you start adding
affiliate links.
Remember that any visitors from feed readers or social bookmarking
sites are very unlikely to want to buy anything. Visitors who find
your posts by searching on Google are very likely to want to buy
something.
A link baiting campaign for a new affiliate site can help the site get
good rankings very quickly and avoid the dreaded Google Sandbox.
Affiliate sites are very hard to build links for so starting your
sites life as a blog allows you to build links for free and then flip
the blog to an affiliate site after a few months.
Read the rest of the link baiting article tomorrow.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
great stuff congrats on your success
I am looking very forward to hearing about this friend – A definite RSS.
Hey, looks like a great series coming up.
I know you probably don’t want to talk about niches specifically, but roughly how many sites/blogs do you run?
I run less than 10 sites myself, to create something good takes a lot of time so it really isn’t worth spreading yourself too thin.
I run 3 sites. 2 are niche sites with content and ads affiliated related to their respected niche. Instead of throwing adsense at people I think they get more out of offering them a product.
I have added the RSS feed to my feed reader also. Looking forward to the tips anxiously
Wow, that is pretty nice tip. I didn’t there is other mean to earn as good money as Google adsense. My watching Anime online http://www.instantz.net earned like approximately $60 a month with google adsense so was looking forward for another way to increase my income and stumble upon this.
I run several niche blogs and have always been a fan of affiliate marketing over PPC. Looking forward to reading more from your blog.
Good suggestion about waiting to add affiliate links weeks after posting.
My income took off when I switched from Adsense to affiliate programs for my various niche sites, and I haven’t looked back since.
For a free report of 100+ internet advertising monetization programs look up Collectia.com.
You can redistribute it as you please.
What affiliate program do you prefer.. please im interested
Thanks for the great info man. I’ve your RSS feed to keep on this series.
Kojak, to start off I would suggest Auction Ads and then maybe Commission Junction if you can find a good program on there.
It looks like the ban from adsense was the best thing ever happened to you
Nice blog by the way, I will subscribe to your feed.
Good article, can’t wait to read more…
The only way I see people making money from affiliate links is by referring them to other websites which promise to help them make money. For example, most people have text link ads on their blog which promises $100 free text links and in the process the referrer makes all the money. Let’s hope this isn’t one of those blog stories.
You said “Having been banned from Adsense 3 times in the past for no reason”
Don’t u think 3 times registration itself is not allowed? :d
affiliate program is definitely more difficult than adsense, care to share a few tips? thanks
Hi guys I have my own business but on the side, I am an affiliate for 2u.co.uk which is a mobile phone site. I am actually doing pretty well from it and I havent really done that much work yet. I was blogging for a while and content writing for various websites and made a little bit of money with ad sense but I found it to be a nuisance, so now I am sticking with affiliate marketing! I am thinking about starting a blog about my experiences so watch this space guys.
Affiliate marketing is an easy way to earn money.. Through thousands of affiliate program and products, merchants and affiliate marketesr will both surely earn. But saying easy does not mean that affiliate marketer will not do hard work and effort. There are things that affiliate marketer and merchant should do and possess to fully achieve success in affiliate marketing business.
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