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You are now almost ready to make some money.
You have developed some traffic, so let's
find some companies who will pay you a commission
for sending them some of that traffic.
On the Internet, most successful companies
have an "affiliate program". That
means that they are willing to pay a commission
to ANYONE who sends them new customers. You
are going to become that someone.
Instead of looking for companies individually,
I recommend two networks whose sole purpose
is to connect companies to affiliates. These
networks are generally free. The two I recommend
are:
1. Commission Junction http://www.CommissionJunction.com
2. ClickBank http://www.ClickBank.com
Both of these have tools that will tell you
how profitable a particular merchant is to
all affiliates in the network on average.
That is extremely important because there
are merchants out there that scam affiliates.
They get you to sign up and send your traffic,
but somehow you never make a sale. If you
use the above two networks, you can eliminate
99% of that kind of merchant. If they try
to do that, the network statistics will show
it and they won't get any new affiliates.
So, use the above two networks.
This article will focus on Commission Junction
(CJ for short). CJ is one of the two largest
affiliate networks in existence. The other
network which may or may not be larger at
the time you read this is LinkShare. I don't
recommend LinkShare when you are getting started
because there are no network-wide statistics.
You simply can't tell how well a merchant
pays until you have first invested some of
your hard-earned traffic. You may want to
check them out at a later time though. I still
get $25-$300 checks from various LinkShare
merchants every week.
To signup at CommissionJunction (which is
free)...
Click on this link and follow the directions:
https://signup.cj.com/member/publisherSignUp.do
1. Click on "Solutions" up top.
2. Click on "application" under
"Publisher Solutions" on the left.
3. Follow the rest of the directions to get
our free CJ publisher account.
Once you have your CJ account, you can login
here:
http://www.cj.com
To find CJ advertisers in your topic area,
do this:
1. Click "Get Links"
2. In the search box, enter the main topic
of your site.
3. You will receive a list of merchants.
They are ordered by the EPC (amount they pay
on average per 100 clicks/visitors). You can
see their 3 month average and their 7 day
average.
4. Click the check box next to each merchant
that you think would fit well with your site.
Then click the "Apply to Program"
button. I recommend avoiding merchants who
have an EPC lower than $5.00.
5. Some merchants manually approve applications;
others approve everyone. Your list will now
show which merchants have already approved
you. For each of those, click the "View
Links" button.
6. It will show you all of the acceptable
advertising methods for that advertiser. Some
are banners (graphics), some are text. Ignore
the banners. Scroll down until you see the
first text link. Click the "Get HTML"
link to the far right of the first text link
you find for this advertiser.
7. Select the code in the box near the middle
of the popup window you get. Right click on
it after you have selected it and choose "Copy".
8. Use FrontPage (or DreamWeaver) to open
each page in your resource directory that
matches the link on CJ. Switch to HTML view
in Front Page and go down to the first link
on the page. Paste the CJ code right above
it. Now go back to regular view in Front Page
and see if the link looks OK and was pasted
into the right area. You can also format it
to look more like the other links on the page.
9. Repeat this for each advertiser. You want
as many links as you can scattered throughout
your resource directory.
10. Upload your site with the new CJ links.
That's it. Now you can sit back and relax.
You can check on sales at any time at CJ,
but there is no need to ship any products
or do anything else. The merchant handles
everything and pays CJ who then pays you monthly.
I highly recommend this as an initial way
to start making money with your content website.
About the Author: The author, James D.
Brausch, is the coach and webmaster of QuitThatJob.com,
a site dedicated to providing step-by-step
instructions to start your own profitable
Internet business and Quit That Job! For
more information, please visit: http://www.quitthatjob.com
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