Back when I first started making money online over ten years ago, the Amazon.com affiliate program was pretty much the only game in town. Aspiring entrepreneurs like me would gamely drive traffic to the world's biggest bookstore with dollar signs in our eyes. Send us a book buyer, Amazon said, and we'll send you a check - brilliant!
Fast-forward a decade and suddenly Amazon is just one more program in a vast sea of revenue sharing opportunities. Merchants and vendors worldwide now offer affiliate programs for just about every conceivable product or service category. The choices – and the risks – are many.
New affiliate marketers often succumb to 'opportunity fever' and frantically start joining every 'hot' new program they discover. With so many offers of easy money and fat affiliate commissions, who wouldn't want to jump at every opportunity that comes along? Unfortunately, this misguided business 'strategy' is also a classic recipe for failure.
My advice - and a strategy that has served me very well through the years - is to get tough from the outset and avoid this temptation with a vengeance. Instead, focus intently on only a handful of proven revenue sources that will both support and enhance your the overall content and theme of your blog or website and you're likely to achieve far better results.
As you launch your online marketing career or even as you create that new blog or website, try following the brilliant strategy Dave Purves' uses for his 'Dave's Cool Little Website' product and focus on three key revenue producing partners – Adsense, ClickBank, and eBay.
Adsense – Since it's launch in 2003, Google's Adsense program has been one of the hottest topics in the Internet marketing universe. By including a snippet of code on your website, Google is able to automatically display advertisements on your pages, paying you real money when your visitors click.
Through Google's smart 'contextual advertising' technology, the ads that your visitors see are actually targeted to the theme of the content on your pages, making the ads both relevant and appealing to your visitors – and potentially more profitable for you!
ClickBank - Information marketing is hotter than ever and in my opinion nobody does it better than ClickBank. Once you sign on as a ClickBank affiliate, you'll be able to quickly and easily market any of the digital products offered through ClickBank's vast digital marketplace.
With over 10,000 digital product vendors offering affiliate commissions that range from 1% all the way up to a whopping 75%, you're almost certain to find the perfect e-book or digital product or service to profitably compliment the theme of your website.
eBay – You know that eBay is all about buying and selling. But did you know that eBay also has a very popular affiliate program? Managed through Commission Junction, eBay affiliates are able to display auction items from any category live on their websites. When people click-through and buy, eBay affiliates make real money.
There's literally something for everybody on eBay and that makes this affiliate program a particularly powerful revenue generating tool for even the most unusual website or blog topic.
Although I've used variations of this strategy for many years with different degrees of success, the 'Dave's Cool Little Website' hybrid marketing technique has proven to be an incredible moneymaker and I recommend it highly. Get tough, get focused and get to work building your profitable online business. Good luck!
Richie Carey is an affiliate marketer, web developer and e-commerce consultant and has been helping people make money online since 1996. You can learn more about building a profitable online business by visiting Richie's website at: http://www.careyinternet.com/
