Affiliate Selling: How to Monetize Your Blog

This is an Affiliate Success story! How I made My First Big Sales with LinkShare Corporation

Affiliate programs can be a very profitable for a blogger, web designer, web marketer or website owner. In short, you sign up with a particular Affiliate program (Companies,) they approve your website or blog, and you place links on your website or blog and if a user clicks the links and makes a purchase, you get a percentage of the profit.

To learn more about Linkshare, Click Linkshare Affiliate Program: Monetize Your Site

I signed up with numerous affiliates, all approving my blog pretty quick. I put affiliate links, affiliate banners and affiliate products that were relevant to my blog in hopes that a user would catch the advertisement, click the affiliate link and make a purchase...I did not have any luck, at all, for a little while. The affiliate report said that I was getting thousands of impressions on their affiliate links, but no sales were being made...Deciding that I was simply giving my affiliate programs free advertising and nothing more.

Ok, now you're wondering, When does the success part come in?

Well, I'm getting there, have some patience! :) After removing all of the pretty cluttered affiliate links I had on my blog, I started focusing on other money making opportunities. But, after long I went back to LinkShare.com (An Affiliate program I signed up for) and starting really browsing the affiliates. I started thinking about what companies I might actually purchase from, companies my friend's might actually purchase from. I came across TigerDirect, and remembered my good friend talking about the great refurbished computer he bought from them online for a really great price. So I made the decision to apply for The Tiger Direct Affiliate program.

After I signed up, I didn't simply grab the banners and links and fill my whole site up with them. I actually visited the Tiger Direct website, and started browsing the sales, the deals, the new products and everything they had to offer. I saw a lot of Mp3 Players and Mp4 Players that were just as snazzy looking as the ipod, some with 2GB of storage space, for less than $100!

I did some research on MP3 players and Tiger Direct's MP3 products, read reviews online for their MP3 players and MP4 players, and asked some of my friends who owned non-ipod MP3 players how they worked and if they liked them. The response was really positive to my surprise. I thought, if I am surprised and interested in MP3 players for so cheap, there are sure to be others looking to purchase MP3 players that would find this information just as interesting. So, I wrote up an article titled, "Top 10 MP3 Players Under $100." You can read the actual article by clicking the Title link.

I used the Affiliate links, Affiliate banners and Affiliate product links inside the article and reposted it on Google Base and my Blog, of course.

After 2 days I had made 2 MP3 player sales. After a week I had made 7 MP3 player sales. I thought, This is great! Now I know there actually is money to be made using Affiliates. I didn't touch the article, promote it or move forward with it at all, just let it sit on Google Base and My blog.

Then, after another week (2 weeks have passed total) I looked back at my Linkshare Affiliate account and saw that I had sold 16 Mp3 Players totaling $995 in sales! I make a percentage of that, which I am not at will to disclose ( I wish I could!! :) and it was VERY VERY exciting, surprising and an enlightening experience for me. My whole outlook on Affiliate programs and making money online has changed. Yey me!

After thousands and thousands of page impressions, and numerous banners and link mess on my blogs, I finally made sales with my Affiliate using nothing more than a little research, insight and understanding of my product and one article write up.

I hope you have just as much luck with your Affiliate Campaigns, and feel free to ask questions or post Success stories, comments, concerns!