KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays by Comm, Joel (free e books to read .TXT) 📕

offering two different kinds of affiliate programs: The company’s Performance Fee structure has a scale that starts at 4 percent, and although it can reach 15 percent for some goods, it’s unlikely that many “associates” would see those returns; the Classic Fee structure pays a flat 4 percent, significantly less than the affiliate would have earned for the same sale had he or she signed up with Barnes & Noble.

However, as a Barnes & Noble affiliate, that person might struggle to make the sale. Affiliates earn a commission only for online sales, and those are more likely to come from Amazon.

While it’s easy to compare the details of different programs, without knowing the click-through rates of different programs and which kinds of audiences generated them, it’s always very difficult to say which program would suit your site best.

Fortunately, there are a couple of ways to stumble toward the best option for your site. The first is to test out different programs. That will take awhile, but it’s the only way to know for sure which program delivers the best results in practice.

The second way is to benefit from the experience of other publishers in your field. Lee Torrens, for example, is a microstock photographer whose blog Microstock Diaries (www.microstockdiaries.com) offers advice for other photographers looking to increase their picture sales. He also provides reviews and overviews of the site’s affiliate programs so that photographers with web sites can add to their earnings through referrals as well as image sales. His site has become a major resource for photographers hoping to earn a little cash—and it helps them choose the right affiliate programs for their site, shortening their testing times.

You should find that this sort of information is available in many fields, and if it isn’t available in yours, you know what to write your next blog about.

Choosing the Products that People Want

If assessing merchants and comparing programs can be a bit of a head-scratcher, choosing products should be a breeze.

The rule is: Choose products you know.

We’ve already seen how vital trust is in a successful affiliate program. When you feel confident that your users will get some real benefits out of using the product, they’ll pick up on your enthusiasm. They’ll also understand that every time you’re offering a product for sale, you’re not just doing it because you want to make a buck. They’ll believe that you’re doing it because you love using the product and that they’ll love using the product, too.

This is one of the great things about adding affiliate links to a web site. Not only do you get to reward the creator of a product you like, you get to bring some real benefits to your users—and make money out of it, too. Perhaps the best place to look for products to recommend then is on your shelf and on your desk.

If you’ve bought something and enjoyed using it, then recommending it to the readers of your web site should be a breeze.

As with any rule, this one tends to be broken.

There are plenty of web sites making good money with affiliate links that lead to products the publisher has never heard of. My site DealofDay.com has plenty of affiliate links leading to products I’ve never tried. But the site isn’t personal, and the range of goods on offer makes it clear that these links aren’t recommendations. The site is offering opportunities, and the users are free to decide whether they want to make the most of them (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2My DealofDay.com web site offers deals from thousands of retailers. These deals don’t come recommended, but they do give shoppers a chance to pick up bargains-and this gives my site plenty of opportunity to earn affiliate income.

That creates a whole new kind of opportunity for publishers. If you write about products, however broad the range, you can still make money from affiliate links. The strategy here is mass marketing rather than niche marketing. Instead of promoting one carefully chosen product to people you know will like it, you offer lots of different products to a wide range of people and hope that there’s enough variety to please everyone—or at least enough to give you a decent number of sales.

Sites like these aren’t easy to create. They’re also difficult to market. When you have a broad selection of products, all you can do is make them available. You can’t push them directly to buyers, because no one will believe that you’ve used every product you’re promoting. Even review sites, a useful way to add lots of affiliate products to a web site, can struggle a little here. If you write a negative review, no one will want to buy the product. You’ll have killed your own commissions. But if you only write positive reviews, you’ll kill the credibility of your site, something that’s even more serious.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do it. Review sites that focus on a specific niche can generate very good revenue and supply plenty of opportunity to offer both helpful content and profit-generating ads.

AppCraver (www.appcraver.com), for example, is a site that provides short reviews of iPhone apps. The reviews each come with an affiliate link that leads to Apple’s iTunes store, where readers can make a purchase. (Apple pays 5 percent commission for each sale.) But that’s not the only way the site monetizes those reviews.

In fact, it’s likely that most readers will decide to purchase directly from their iPhones rather than downloading first to iTunes and then moving the app to their mobile devices. So AppCraver offers an alternative way to turn users into cash. In addition to linking to apps, the site also runs a store that sells iPhone accessories. That store is operated as a separate site, but ads for specific products also run on the side of the page next to the reviews themselves (Figure 5.3).

When it comes to choosing products, you should find that being selective and recommending items you’ve used and loved