Make Money With Affiliate Programs

Earlier, I discussed how you could make money with Google Adsense & HubPages. Here are some more ideas on this thread.

Here is a question for you –- do you need to have your own website to make money as an affiliate, selling products on behalf of other people and taking a cut of the proceeds?

How To Make Money With Affiliate Programs

The answer, happily enough, is no: you can make money as an affiliate WITHOUT having to run your own website. All you have to do is join a website like Squidoo or Hubpages (ideally Squidoo, as this lets you use affiliate links more easily than Hubpages does). All you do then is to create web pages that are based around specific subjects. Of course, you can always start your own blog and website and become an affiliate through this channel (this is actually part of our business model here at The Smarter Wallet), but the point I’m making is that you can do the same thing without having to be a site owner or blogger.

The reason why this is the easiest way to start making money like this is because you don’t have to shell out any cash to get it going. My first money making efforts were on Squidoo, and I soon noticed that being part of a built in community did help to get my own traffic going towards my pages on the site. I definitely benefited from the way the whole site and community are set up. Squidoo gets plenty of traffic anyway so there is always a good chance my pages will be seen by anyone browsing the site.

Make Money As An Affiliate: An Example

The other good thing about going on a site like this is that you can make mistakes more easily. The easiest way to set up your own website is to use a WordPress template to create an easy to update site. You can make money with a blog. But if you don’t feel confident enough to do this yet (and you don’t want to spend money) you can start on a free site like Squidoo or HubPages.

I also think that the easiest way to start making money is to be an affiliate for products you really love. Let’s say for example that you are a huge fan of TV’s “Lost”. Some of these television series can be pretty popular, so they’re good to focus on.

To create your site pages: you can generate a separate page dedicated to each character and then provide links to the various “Lost” paraphernalia and DVD box sets in each web page. You could also write a separate page on the major events in each series. There are countless ideas you can use and expound upon just from this one example, and each one can have links to affiliate products in it.

I have made a lot of cash through one specific Squidoo lens that deals with my favorite topic –- writing. I have a real passion for this, so of course I find it easy to write about it in an enthusiastic manner. This, I think, is the real secret to making money as an affiliate. If you are truly passionate about the subject you are writing about, you will draw more people in and get them in the mood to buy things. It definitely makes a huge difference -– that writing focused lens is still my best performing page.

So if you want to make money as an affiliate, you should start by picking subjects you love. These will always produce a better income than you will get by trying to write about something you don’t really have a major interest in. I’ve found this works for me every time, and I still haven’t really scratched the surface of what I can earn from my favorite topics.

So get out there now, start thinking and make some money online! So which affiliate programs would you like to join?