Make Money Online

Become an Affiliate

Every once and a while life throws you a curve ball that no matter how well you concentrate and take your best swing at, you are going to strike out. Last year I was employed full time and was receiving a good pay check. I hated my job, my supervisor was intimidated by me and I was commuting over one hundred and twenty miles a day. The supervisor had never done any of the jobs she was supervising. She was the kind of person that would not admit that she did not understand the processes that we needed to complete in order to serve the clients. She would not ask questions and became angry if you volunteered information. One day I needed an answer to a question that she could not answer. I went over her head to the director to get the answer. This was the beginning of the end of my career with the agency. She made my life so miserable I finally quit one day and just walked away.

I took a couple of months off to heal emotionally from the experience. I interviewed for a few positions that were opened, but I did not have the spirit to work with clients. I was talking to my niece’s husband and he told me I should become an affiliate and work on-line at home. I laughed at him because we had recently bought a computer and I was having a difficult time setting up an email account. I told him I did not have enough computer skills to make a living off the internet. He told me that there where many training opportunities on the internet and that it did not take a great deal of computer skill to become an affiliate. He asked me if I knew how to get around the internet by doing searches through the big information providers such as Google and Yahoo. I told him that I had done searches to find general information. He explained that most people that had a computer did these general searches. Once you become an affiliate for various companies you help people find their way to the information or products that they want. If a person that you direct to a website buys something you get a commission. Basically you are in advertising.

This seemed like it would be an interesting system to learn. I started doing some research on the computer. I had not noticed that most websites have an area on their home page where you can become an affiliate. I started exploring these pages and found that different companies pay different percentages of sales as commissions. I found a general training program to learn the different techniques to use the search engines to direct people to various sites. It took a few weeks, but I have started to get commission checks.

You As An Associate Affiliate Can Change Your Life Or Not

Being an associate affiliate can be extremely profitable, but it’s not as easy as all the gurus make it sound.  After all, you have to generate targeted traffic and make it convert in order to get paid.  That means convincing people, most of them with short attention spans, to take sign up for offers or make purchases through your link. 

This works out well for both parties because the producer doesn’t pay you money until you give them some leads or customers.  Associate affiliates use this relationship to make money without having to worry about customer service or product delivery. It sort of lowers the risk for both involved parties.

For beginners, this is a great way to start earning money.  You’ll also learn the ropes of internet marketing and this is vital to your long term success. Of course, your site might have its own goal, but starting off with promoting a product that is already converting and optimized you’re making things a lot easier for yourself.  Doing so requires a combination of factors almost all of which are under your control, which is a good thing.

Many companies will allow you to sign up for their affiliate program even if you don’t have a website of your own.  On the other hand, some companies require you to have a website that’s closely related to their niche and you’ll need to submit traffic stats to them in order to become an associate affiliate for them.  After all, if you have the same topics on your sites, there’s a greater likelihood of crossover from readers.  If you had a soccer website, you probably wouldn’t have crossover readers for a site on wheelchairs. 

Another factor to know about is keywords.  Keywords are the words that people put into search engines to look for a specific topic or subject.  Just about anything can be a keyword phrase, but some keywords are more profitable than others.  These are usually keywords which have moderate to high searches on a regular basis and a low number of competing pages.  Optimize your sites for the most profitable keywords and you’ll stand a greater chance of not only making sales, but securing a hands-off income stream.

Of course, being an associate affiliate isn’t the be all and end all.  Unless you’re simply there to make money, you probably opened a website because it’s something you’re interested in.  If you’re not enjoying it anymore and you’re not just in it for money, feel free to move on to more interesting prospects. 

You have to be in a place that’s good for you – otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to stand the grit and the everyday pressure that a website demands.  If you’re still interested, there’s a lot of money to be made being an associate affiliate and if you go about the process correctly you can turn your efforts into residual, long term rewards.

Tags: associate affiliate, affiliate marketing