Affiliate Marketing

This is the fifth post of my Affiliate Marketing: a Beginner's Guide series.

Like many other posts here, I'm writing about the stuff I wish I knew when I first started blogging. With so many affiliate programs to choose from it is hard to know where to start. I had a hard time figuring out which affiliate program I should try.

The "best" affiliate program depends largely on your niche. If, for example, you write about dating and relationships, your best bet is to sign up with a dating website's affiliate program.

Having said this, let me tell you what has worked best for me and share my comments:

Clickbank has out-performed every other affiliate program I've tried. Most of the products on clickbank were specifically designed for online affiliate marketing, which is a big advantage. Many of the clients offer 75% commission to you, the blogger, for sales. Clickbank also gives you a ton of valuable information in terms of analytics: hops per order, etc.

Shopzilla has been a consistent earner for me as well. It is sort of a modified pay-per-click program. This means you get paid for clicks (vs sales), but the earning potential isn't as high as with commission affiliates. I have a couple of pages/posts that regularly earn 3-5 dollars a day with Shopzilla. This services is more of a slow, steady earner for me: the daily profits ad up.

Amazon.com has one of the most well-known affiliate programs on the internet, and some bloggers do quite well with them. I personally have not made much money with their program, but it is a good one to use for book and video reviews, etc.

Commission Junction is the program used by Dell.com and several other well-known companies.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list. I'm just sharing some of the programs that have worked for me.