Affiliate marketing – Amazon, Audible, and Gamefly
I am enjoying blogging so far, and it is not horribly expensive to run because there are hosting services like WordPress, Blogger, and justhost. However, good service is not free and some people even want to make a profit. So, in the interest of writing the best incomplete overview of affiliate marketing I can, I went searching for affiliate programs that may help me to keep this blog and perhaps even make some coffee money (the local Starbucks is the only place, and I do not think that I am in the minority thinking that it is expensive).
So, what is affiliate marketing?
In a nutshell (I hate that expression), affiliate marketing is when someone pays a content provider for advertisements that may or may not have been. There are several revenue models including the following:
- CPV – cost per view,
- CPC – cost per click, and
- CPA – cost per action
Here is a summary video I found helpful -
So my journey began where affiliate marketing is said (by some) to have begun.
Amazon
Amazon.com asks questions like what methods you will use to drive traffic to your website, why you are joining the affiliates program, and what other methods do you use to monetize your site. Then, you need to specify a payment method. The whole process is quite painless and takes only a few minutes.
Once you have signed up and are ready to put adds in your blog’s content. I am intending to write a few reviews of my favorite gadgets on this site and had thought that Amazon.com would be a good place to get picture from anyway, so the ‘Text and Product Link’ option seems pretty good to me. This will allow me to post a picture of the product as well as a link to Amazon.com so that people can buy the item immediately (I hate waiting too). Amazon has provided a method for getting the ad that is very simple. You do a search for the product, customize the ad to look good in your webpage, and then receive the code.
So, for example, if I was going to do a review of the movie “avatar” I would search for it, select it, change some very simple html/css stuff, then copy the link which I can paste into my post. I could say something like “I enjoyed this recent movie” and include a picture/link like this one -
| The only (very small) drawback in the case above is that, if you want to only have the image, Amazon requires you to download the picture and upload it to your server. Otherwise, Amazon will serve the ad as in the case to the right:
|
Apparently, audible.com is related to amazon in some way. I wanted to take a look at their program anyway, so I just clicked to audible.com from amazon. Signing up to become an affiliate for audible.com is just about the same as well. Once I was done filling in the application, I had to check my email for my user name and password. Unfortunately, it was not obvious at this point how I would get one of their ads into my page.
When I checked my email, I noticed that it stated that there was another step I had to complete prior to getting to place an ad in my blog – to enter my tax id, etc. Apparently, audible uses commission junction (Cj) for its advertising. Cj’s site is fairly easy to navigate, so it took only a few minutes to figure how it works. Unfortunately for me right now, audible.com manually reviews applications and it is Sunday. So, I looked for another advertiser that uses Cj.
Now this is awesome. I enjoy video games as much as anyone, so seeing this company on the list was great. I applied (Cj provides a very easy facility for this) and was approved immediately. So, I found an ad that might look good in my page.
Affiliate advertising is fun, fun, fun. I am not sure if it will really make me any money, but the word on the street is that some people do make money from this. At the very least, it is one more option to keep your blog up and running.
Related posts
- The Keyword Research pdf
- Is The internets Makin' Yins Stupiter?
- How I Use Branding To Promote My Blog
- Invitation: Write a Guest Post for icebluebanana.com!
- Looking At Demand First Could Be Killing Your Business
