Make money with your Blog
Many bloggers start blogging with one primary objective in mind… to make money!
I’ve mentioned in previous posts that there is no shame in making money from your blog. However, please don’t expect to rake in a stack of cash in a short period of time. It really isn’t going to happen without a lot of hard work! Having said that, it certainly is possible to make a steady income from blogging (even in the early days) and there are several methods available. In this post I’m going to concentrate on one of them – affliate marketing.
How affiliate marketing works in its simplest form
An ‘affiliate’ is an online publisher (in our case a blogger) with access to traffic (visitors to the blog).
Affiliates send traffic to ‘merchants’ via links (graphic and/or text) to their sites.
Merchants (often household-name brands) pay affiliates commission on any sales generated from this traffic.
Affiliate programmes are usually facilitated by a third party (an ‘affiliate network’) who introduce merchants to affiliates via a directory of programmes and promotions.
How would affiliate marketing work for you?
If your blog is about football, for example, you would place ads for products and services likely to be of interest to your readers such as football merchandise, online gambling and satellite TV channels. In this instance ads for UKSoccershop.com, SportingBet and Setanta Sports would be ideal, and each of these companies operate affiliate programmes.
If you like the idea of making money via affilate marketing there are hundreds (if not thousands) of affiliate networks around the globe. However, if you are in the UK and your readers are predominently UK-based too, I would recommend AffiliateWindow and Trade Doubler. Both of these companies only promote brands with a strong presence in the UK and pay their affiliates commission in sterling. US affilate networks naturally pay commission in US dollars (or PayPal in some cases) and promote US businesses.
Of all the affiliate networks AffiliateWindow is my personal favourite. They offer a wide variety of over 700 merchants to choose from, their control panel is very easy to use and, perhaps most important of all, they pay their affiliates twice a month. Many networks pay affiliates once a month and two months in arrears!
You can sign up here. The application process requires you to verify your name and address details by making a £5 payment to AffiliateWindow by Credit or Debit card.
This payment is credited directly into your new affiliate account the moment your account is activated and will be paid back as part of your first affiliate payment. The fee is designed to discourage unscrupulous affiliates intent on making dishonest or fraudulent commissions from merchants on the AffiliateWindow network.
I would strongly recommend giving affiliate marketing a try as you can make a steady income. You will have to work hard initially, with the hardest part attracting traffic to your blog. The more readers you have the more successful affiliate marketing will be for you. Once traffic flows to your merchants your income should flow too… without you having to do very much!
Good luck and let me know how you get on. 
