Two great resources that benefit both affiliates and advertisers
Affiliate marketing is one of the ways that A-list bloggers make a majority of their revenues. Whether it’s links to Amazon products that they recommend, or sponsored products from companies in their niche.
Publishers can take advantage of these same opportunities by getting involved in low-maintenance affiliate marketing programs and partnering with companies in their niche. Without the resources at your fingertips, you might not know where to start, so here are a few resources for the day you decide that affiliate marketing will become part of your online publishing plan.
BloggerLinkUp: Blogger LinkUp is a production of Cathy Stucker and Special Interests Publishing. This site has connected thousands of bloggers with companies who want them to blog about their products. It also features guest blogging opportunities for bloggers who are looking to spread their reach.
When subscribed to her email list, you’ll start to get an email every day of the opportunities available for you. These are all usually below a little advertorial for Cathy herself, but there’s plenty of opportunities for bloggers below the fold in every “issue”.
[text_ad]
TextLinkAds: Along with BloggerLinkUp, this service came highly recommended to me when I was in Las Vegas earlier this month talking to affiliate marketing experts at Affiliate Summit. These text ads can be put anywhere on your site, or automatically linked to within your content.
A simple script needs to be installed, and then TextLinkAds does the rest of the work. According to the website, TextLinkAds has the “highest ratio of page real estate to revenue earned versus all other advertising programs including Google AdSense.”
One more thing for publishers selling to affiliates
On the opposite side of the spectrum—if you’re trying to get affiliates— is something that SEOmoz pointed out, about the lack of search engine optimization when it comes to using packaged solutions like Commission Junction and Google AdSense:
“Companies like Commission Junction and Google’s own AdSense will do the implementation for you (and take a piece of the pie), but the real reason NOT to use one of these services is that the links to your site are going to be redirected through THEIR site, so that they can track the clicks, sales, etc. What this means, of course, is that when a crawler looks at your affiliate’s page, it’s going to see a link to the third-party affiliate site, NOT your site.”
Which means… If you’re not looking to accept affiliate ads on your own site, but are looking to sell them on other sites, these three resources above are optimal for boosting your SEO results with those inbound links.
