Shoemoney was founded by Jeremy Shoemaker back in 2003, but Jeremy had already proven to be an innovative businessman. While he was attending Western Illinois University, he started his first business which sold Macintosh games, which was followed by NextPimp.com. By 2006, he was named the Best Affiliate Marketing Blog by a little publication called Search Engine Journal. In 2007, Jeremy teamed up with David Dellanave to start the eBay affiliate service AuctionAds – which was named the “eBay Most Innovative Application-Buyer” at the 6th annual eBay Developers Conference.
In 2007, life was pretty good for Pat Flynn. He was a senior drafter in a Bay Area architecture firm, a job that he loved. When the economy slowed in 2008, Pat was laid off and forced to think of another way to make a living. He took his experience of studying for the LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – and launched a blog (GreenExamAcademy.com) that shared his study notes. This lead Pat to publish his first e-book, which resulted in $8,000 of income during its first month. Since then Pat has launched the Smart Passive Income Blog and the popular Smart Passive Podcast.
I am very impressed by Dowib, truly indeed. They come out with this brilliant internet business concept and gave many opportunities for us to make easy money without any hassle. Professionally designed and supported website, user-friendly technical and support team really opened my eyes and pleased my day! Congrats and good luck to you affiliate website business!
Make people care about you. You have to get them emotionally invested in you before you can sell them anything. In fact, Henry says that you should never try to sell something right away, at least not until people become fully vested in you and your personal journey. Russell Brunson calls this your Attractive Character. This is what's allowed both Henry and Brunson to achieve wildly-outlandish incomes from their affiliate marketing efforts.
There’s a good reason why ClickBank is still a strong contender, however it does tend to focus more on digital products which may be of questionable quality. Yes, the review process is more professional these days, but it’s still primarily focused on selling digital products, especially “how to make money” courses and the like. That being said, there are some genuinely high-quality products on offer, and few affiliate programs are bigger than ClickBank, especially in selling (primarily digital) books.
A “viral” product is one that is designed to spread (often quickly) to a great many people - this can be a great way of getting your affiliate links out there without ever having to create a website. You can produce a short 30-page eBook or a "special report" on a particular subject, insert links to affiliate products into it, then distribute your book through whatever means you like – you could tell people that they're welcome to give it away, sell it or put it on their websites. You can kick it off yourself by selling the eBook on eBay for a small amount.
I would especially like to thank your “support staff” – as I had to contact them at least 10 times for answers to things that I just didn’t understand (as I am new to this). They got back to me almost immediately and solved all my problems cheerfully – without making me feel stupid. I will most certainly recommend your site to everyone that I know that is interested in putting together a professional website without any hassles. Thank you for making it so easy.
Great article. Thanks for writing it. I am right now picking my theme and building my wordpress. I have my hosting and domain name. What I don’t get though from the article is whether you have to apply to Amazon to be an affiliate or if they accept everyone. How does that all work? Like if I build my site and post links to amazon’s products, they wouldn’t have my details to pay me my commission. Do the templates do all that for you automatically? I am finding it hard to choose one because I want one that automatically integrates the amazon products without making my blog look like a shop per se. I’m going to have a look on the amazon site to see if there’s any clues there. But I thought that was the finishing and crucial touch, which forgive me, seems missing from your well explained and detailed article.
Find and work with affiliates. Affiliates will help grow your business and help you tap into web traffic. There are many ways to meet and engage with affiliates, but the best way to access desirable affiliates is by building a reputation for yourself. You can do this by developing a popular blog or otherwise earning a large online following, or by becoming a published author of a book or article.[15] There are other ways of meeting affiliates, of course, and each method will vary in its success and required effort. Generally speaking, the basic course of action for acquiring affiliates typically involves one of the following methods:
This is one the cleanest designs I’ve seen of an Amazon Affiliate Website. It has a very professional look for a review website, but they don’t overcrowd you with product reviews right off. This site really sets itself apart with their actual videos and reviews inside of their test center. You know these testers are actually testing the product rather than copying a review from another site or making things up. It’s so legit that I will likely be back to this site for future reviews for my purchases. It really gains your trust with the photos and videos even though you know they are making money through the affiliate commissions. Plus they buy all the products themselves and never accept any products from the manufacturer to maintain objectivity, but when you bring in 3.1 million visitors per month, you can buy a few items to review.
If you have an e-book or online course that you'd like to promote, ClickBank makes that easy. Once you sign up as a vendor you can list your product with them and set the commission percentage you are willing to pay to anyone who chooses to market and promote your product for you. Once your product is listed, other ClickBank users will start promoting it on their own websites. This will drive traffic to the sales page on your website and hopefully result in sales.
First things first, choose a niche. You should choose something which interests you, you don’t mind learning about, or have the ability to pay someone else to write about. Consider the potential costs carefully before delving into something which you know absolutely nothing about. Another important aspect is to be confident that it will be a lucrative niche to work in. There needs to be an abundance of products to promote, and the commission levels need to be significant enough to give you a good profit each time a sale is made.
4. I don't reveal earnings or make income claims on the blog. Let's just say that I've been running this blog for 8 months now, often working 12hrs per day on it, and if you look at how much income the blog has generated I'd be working at below minimum wage. But that's fine as this is a long term project and it's what I expected, I'm not here for quick cash.
There are two ways to approach affiliate marketing: You can offer an affiliate program to others or you can sign up to be another business's affiliate. As the business driving an affiliate program, you'll pay your affiliates a commission fee for every lead or sale they drive to your website. Your main goal should be to find affiliates who'll reach untapped markets. For example, a company with an e-zine may make a good affiliate because its subscribers are hungry for resources. So introducing your offer through a "trusted" company can grab the attention of prospects you might not have otherwise reached.
Once you hit the green Select button you’ll end up on the domain name page. This is where the fun begins! Choose a good, short, easy-to-spell, and relevant domain name for your business. Keep in mind that the best .com names are long gone so get creative or use a .net if you need to. If you need some help please take a few minutes to read this article I wrote on the topic: domain name tips.
The product review website model is great since many shoppers use the internet to save time researching their potential purchases. If you choose this website type be prepared to face alot of competition. Since there are so many review sites out there you must find an approach or ‘hook’ that is unique to set your site apart. It’s best to drill down into a small segment of your niche and expand from there instead of casting a large net over an entire market. 
Once you’ve done all the heavy lifting of niche selection, keyword research, and competition analysis, then you can finally start building your site. It’s important not to skip all the steps above. You’d hate to spend months on a site, only to learn that it won’t be profitable at all. All that hard work for nothing. You can read more about why I use WordPress for my Amazon sites.
Hi, Jamie! Very good list. I needed something like this for 2018 so that I know what to target in the future blogs I create. As for now, I’m comfortable using SiteGround affiliate network and it’s pretty good actually. Their hosting service is pretty much the best considered its price. I’ve tried others but SiteGround stands out. I’ll also try new affiliate networks, something from the list you have just provided. I think Amazon is too saturated at the moment, and I need a better network. 2018 will be interesting indeed.
Commission Junction is a long-running affiliate marketing company, and attracts some larger brand names for promoters to apply for. It’s at the bottom of my list for one reason only: They expect even the newest affiliate marketer to produce results in as little as six months, so it’s best to apply after you’ve already established your website and have some experience under your belt from other programs. That may make it sound like it’s not the best for beginners, and for those starting completely fresh in the affiliate marketing world, that’s very true. But, again, for those who have some experience with affiliate marketing (maybe you’ve been an affiliate partner with Amazon for a little while and want to move on), you can be very successful with Commission Junction.
You can make really good commissions from the eBay partner but it depends on the products which you decide to promote. Interestingly the commission levels vary according to where you are in the world not just on the products you decide to promote. One of the great reasons to sign up is that you can earn DOUBLE commissions in your first three months. They offer free to use link generators, ad creatives and widgets for you to promote different eBay items. eBay has over 162 Million active buyers which means there is a great potential to convert your traffic.
Shopify is a very popular site building platform for people interested in building eCommerce stores. It has been around for the past few years and seen significant growth in its user base over this time. You can earn a staggering 200% per sale for every new customer you refer to them, which means that there is up to $2400 per new customer on offer.
That being said, LinkConnector’s platform looks and feels outdated and is rather clumsily designed. Their dashboard also makes it difficult to find “hot” products or compare conversion rates, leaving affiliates somewhat in the dark about which products to choose. Ironically, despite their low-quality website, they offer some of the best customer service in the affiliate space.
Content is King – The more successful websites had content that was around 1,000 words per post. Google identifies this as better content and it’ll help your search rankings. It can’t just be gibberish though, it helps if you break up the content into 6-8 different sections so it’s easy for the user to navigate while still being lengthy. I used to think 300 words was good and 500 was above and beyond. I’ll likely spend even more time on articles and aim for around 1,000 words per article like my most popular article “Robinhood App Review” at 1,500 words.
Before you can even think about starting your first affiliate marketing website, you need to know what your website is going to be about in the first place. What topic(s) are you going to cover? What services will you promote and sell on your site? For those looking for advanced training on this, you can sign up for a high-quality training course like this one. Otherwise, here is a good video explaining how to find a good affiliate marketing niche:
This is a great example of an Amazon Affiliate Website that’s not a review site! It’s actually more like a food blog that recommends certain products through their blog and resource pages. With 1.6 Million Facebook Likes, Lisa Leak (owner) has become an authority on “real food” and uses this platform to sell other things like her own cook book. This example is more for a traditional blogger who wants to start monetizing their website rather than creating a review site.
3. Wide Markets Wide Markets Ltd, provides a unique cross-channel advertising solution for eCommerce businesses. The company owns Wide Markets Media™ , Wide Markets Fashion™, Wide Markets eTickets™ and Wide Markets eStores™. Advertisers can sell their goods and services through the native products created by Wide Markets, receiving outstanding User-Values. In the other hand, publishers benefits from a native method to monetize their online assets finding higher conversion rates. The company supports the Performance Marketing Association and is an active Champion Member.
Do you have any opinions about sites that got hit with Google Fred for having too much affiliate content? I think one of your other sites got hit (not TYS) and I saw you add a lot of new content but it’s not going up much. The same thing happened to me; I had too much affiliate content and got penalized; added more content but it’s not helping. I am thinking of just starting a new site and redirecting links to the new site. I feel like this penalty is unrecoverable….
After a few months, Charles was able to convert $4,000 into $1,000,000+ in profit. Of course, there were some hiccups along the way. Charles launched 14 unsuccessful campaigns and lost $4,000 before he found success. What makes Charles unique is he’s open about his failures and uses that to help advise anyone interested in affiliate marketing. Not only does his blog offer affiliate and marketing tips, Charles also shares lifestyle and career advice.
“The Rakuten Marketing team developed and executed an online marketing performance strategy that far exceeded our target goals for brand awareness, new customer acquisition and ROAS in our first-ever partnership with Disney. The campaign was such a success, we’re aiming to replicate the results with the launch of our Incredibles Collection launch this year. We look forward to continued, long-term program success with Rakuten Marketing’s expertise and proven technologies.”
Will my target audience realistically spend this amount for the product? Again, your reputation is on the line here. Is the product you are thinking of promoting priced reasonably for your audience? When I was writing my ebook, I was stuck on pricing. I asked around for opinions. A number of people suggested I price my ebook at $47! Their idea was to price according to value, not size. In my mind that was crazy. My network was composed of a lot of stay-at-home bloggers, and my collective audience was comprised mostly of people without a whole lot of disposable income. There was no way anyone was going to pay $47 for my 30-page ebook.
The advantages of the affiliate marketing business model for the affiliate are quite obvious to anyone. Having the opportunity to effectively ‘sell stock’ without having any of the costs or responsibilities of manufacturing, buying or storing it is very liberating. In addition to this, when working with a high-paying network like MoreNiche, the profit potential is enormous.
Affiliate Platform Description: Since 2006, WarriorPlus has brought together the leaders in online digital product creation and marketing. We’ve established a thriving and dynamic community where great minds share great products for greater success. We are committed to serving you and being a part of your journey to help others build their own profitable online business.
Wealthy Affiliate is my top suggestion for two reasons: They offer in-depth training on how to be a successful affiliate marketer, and they offer round the clock support from other affiliates, both old and new, so it’s essentially a huge community of people working together to help each other be as successful as possible. It’s free to sign up, and once you get used to the way everything works, you can either upgrade to a premium membership or stick to the free one if you want to.
A relative newcomer to the affiliate space, MaxBounty was founded in 2004 in Ottawa, Canada. MaxBounty claims to be the only affiliate network built specifically for affiliates. MaxBounty is exclusively a CPA (Cost Per Action/Acquisition) company that doesn’t deal with ad banners or the like, just customer links that the publisher (blogger) chooses where to place on their website.
I do have a question, though, you state that longer articles are better (which I understand). I've found a niche that has a few keywords with very high CPC (no real affiliation program can be used though), with a few thousand searches a month. For each keyword I could probably 500 words on each keyword. Should I do this, or should I compile them into one big article? They keywords can be linked to each other, for example, "how to start running", "basics of running" etc. (Those obviously aren't the keywords, and more can be written on those). What would you recommend?
All our affiliate websites are completely automated, ready-to-go and every page is self-updating. You can start making money today with a fully functional and beautifully designed affiliate website, ready loaded with products. We have done all the work for you, the only thing you’ll need to do is bring people to your affiliate website and check to see how much money you’ve earned.
However, be aware that you need to submit an application to most of these networks to be accepted. Once you're accepted in, you're often required to apply directly to the merchant afterwards. So there are two layers or gates that you need to bypass. That's also why it's important to build up your platform and create that emotional bridge between yourself and your audience before attempting to promote anything to them.
I read this title and expected an awesome community of runners sharing their glory stories of braving the snow and rain to log in miles. Instead I’m directed to a boring treadmill site. This site is about 5 pages and a couple of additional pages for reviews for treadmills. The reviews are the only pages with any kind of lengthy content and those are still only around 800 words. The main redeeming quality about this site, is they are focusing on high price items so even a single sale of a treadmill is a nice commission. This is another example of a website you could make in a weekend. It’s motivating though because you know you can do better, right?
15. AdCombo AdCombo is a CPA Marketing Network, that uses its own in-house technology, that allows you to customize advertising campaigns to reach your targeted audience throughout the globe. They aim at, and hit their target in, encouraging strategic lucrative partnerships between advertisers and publishers to monetize their traffic. AdCombo has offices and co-workings in 5 cities around the globe.
When promoting affiliate offers, just make sure you are fully aware of all the terms and conditions attached to your affiliate program. Some programs can be strict about how they allow you to promote their products. For example, some may limit you to banner ads and links only, while others will allow you to use paid advertising, but won't allow email marketing.
Earning income via Target affiliates, however, requires a bit of work. Cookies expire in just seven days, and commissions can be as low as just one percent, so you’ll need to be operating a high-traffic website in order to make serious cash with this program. But with Target’s much-beloved brand reputation and vast catalog, relevant product links can be a big earner for established influencers.
I relay the story of Dan Henry because it exemplifies the power of this thing called the internet that binds us all. And while Henry has succeeded on a massive scale, so many others have hit roadblocks, stumbled, fallen and failed. The large rate of failure helps to mystify and obfuscate this world of affiliate marketing because so many are trying to penetrate this market but so few are able to succeed on a large scale.
It is one successful online marketer and training program of Chris Farrell Membership is voted as number one training program by the IMReport Card. CFM is the introductory course, which teaches the beginners to earn money on the internet through the affiliate marketing. This program consists of 21 days of training lesson, which breaks down in simple-to-follow steps to follow. There’re many things that you will learn from this program, like setting up the email marketing campaign, making your own website right from the scratch, understanding more about SEO, using YouTube and social media, and lots more in one training course. Basic membership will cost around $37 every month and, like other training programs, there’s the higher membership level where you will get the direct training from Chris if you choose to learn a bit more.