Small business owners rarely understand online marketing’s affiliate programs. They are more comfortable with the idea of referrals or small business partnership programs. Here is a basic overview of how internet marketing affiliate programs work and how you could incorporate them into your small business.
Internet Marketing Affiliate Programs
Internet marketing affiliate programs are pretty neat! Basically, they allow you to sign up, get a link that is associated with your account and then use that link to make money. When someone buys a product or sometimes just gives an email address and name, software behind the scenes records that and then once you reach a certain payout level, you get a check in the mail from the company that you are promoting.
Where do you find affiliate programs?
It is easy to tell if a company you do business with has an online affiliate program! Simply go to the bottom of their website and see if there is a link to “affiliate program”. Once you click on that link, generally they will ask a bunch of questions, including your Social Security Number or EIN business number. This is so that they can send you a 1099 if you make more than $600 per year with their program.
How do you pick which affiliate programs to promote?
I am VERY picky about which affiliate programs I suggest to my readers or email list. I generally stick to products or services that I use like Constant Contact for email newsletters or the Thesis Theme Print Is Dead I use for Marketing Artfully’s home page. I then include the affiliate link in blog posts, email newsletters and other things I send out.
Additionally, there are often pre-made buttons or banners that you can place on your website which the company that does the program will provide! You would just insert the banner into your post or page about the topic, or into your sidebar if you wanted to promote them all the time. Just make sure include your affiliate link on the picture when you insert it into the blog post or webpage.
ADVANCED TIP – Always make sure your affiliate link prompts a new browser window so that you do not lose that traffic by sending them somewhere else. Let them go to your affiliate link but then return once they close that window! (if you click on the above button, you will see how this works in real time!)
Affiliate Program Bewares
When you get started doing affiliate marketing, there are a few things to watch out for:
- Make sure you have a disclaimer on your site stating that you participate in affiliate programs and that you sometimes post links to them. This is an FTC requirement so that people will know that might be promoting something for monetary gain. (you can see the one I use at the bottom of this page)
- I generally also mention at the end of my post so that there is absolutely no confusion. I am always happy to have people who recommend a product to me send an affiliate link so I am comfortable with doing that myself.
- DO NOT have one disclaimer that you use on each and every post or your site will start ranking for your disclaimer instead of your wonderful content. I wrote a fun post about my FTC disclosures being out of hand if you would like to read more about this!
- DO NOT get spammy! It can seem SO neat that you can get money for nothing that you might want to send it out immediately, put it on your website and send the email templates they give you to everyone twice or three times. Try to avoid that…:) Just put a banner on your site or send out a link in your monthly newsletter. Tell people about it and then offer to send them a link if they want to buy.
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I’ve recently started a blog, the information you provide on this site has helped me tremendously. Thank you for all of your time & work.
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