Join the Best Affiliate Marketing Programs and Monetize Your Website

What are the best affiliate marketing programs online? Finding the top programs can be a challenge even for veteran affiliate marketers. Almost every website owner tries Google’s Adsense at one time or another but eventually you’ll need to move on to other ad networks as well as third-party solutions if you’re serious about making money in this business.

There’s no one or “best” solution, however, since the affiliate marketing top program that works for someone else may not work for you. So much of this success depends on what your site offers and how you target a market.

What’s with all the Alphabet Lingo?

But before I talk about the best marketing programs, it’s helpful to learn a few basics of the affiliate marketplace. The terms used by marketers can be confusing, so here’s a run down of what you need to know:

The majority of the better affiliate marketing programs use revenue sharing methods that involve cost per sale (CPS) or cost per lead (CPL). These programs are also known as cost per action or CPA and this is how most partners are paid commissions. The customer must make a purchase for an affiliate to quality for a CPS commission; and with CPL the affiliate gets paid for a lead such as when the customer registers his name and email on a form.

The best programs for affiliate marketers may also offer cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM) impressions. CPA occurs when a visitor clicks on a link and goes to a merchant’s site. Only very high traffic websites are eligible for CPM revenue sharing.

These advertising methods listed above are also known by the names pay per click (PPC), pay per sale (PPS), pay per lead (PPL), and pay per acquisition (PPA).

How the Ads Work

Advertising on the internet is done in three forms: by banner, text, or video. Banner ads are less effective than they once were as too many web surfers have come accustomed to seeing these image display ads and ignoring them. Video ads are highly appealing, but many site owners still prefer the more profitable text ads and even contextual ads. These can be shown in the margins of a webpage or can be imbedded into the article.

The Levels of Affiliate Marketing Networks

Text, banner and video ads are provided by CPA networks which generally use a one-tier system; a partner is paid for sending a customer to the merchant. A two-tiered or multi-tiered program would involve a down line whereby the partner recruits a partner who recruits a customer; and the first partner would get a small commission from the sale. It’s rare however, and you won’t find that structure in the better marketing programs.

Monetize Your Site with Ad Networks

The easiest and one of the best top programs is Google Adsense which is Google’s ad serving program. Affiliate marketers place JavaScript code in their website’s pages and allow Google to run text, image and video ads on them. Revenue is paid as a CPC (cost per click) although some high traffic sites are paid for CPM impressions. The ads that are displayed are generated by an automated system and are targeted to reflect the contents of the website.

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Contextual ads can also be generated through affiliate marketing programs such as AdBrite, Casale Media, Chitika, Clixsor, Kanoodle BrightAds, TribalFusion and ValueClick among others. Like Adsense, the relevant contextual ads are dynamically delivered for potential click revenue. It should be noted though that Adsense will ban any site that attempts to use competing contextual ads on the same page in which Adsense ads appear.

Revenue Sharing Through Direct and Network Affiliate Programs

Large retailers such as Wal-mart, iTunes, Netflix, and American Express don’t want to deal with thousands of affiliate partners individually so they outsource the program to a third party, called a CPA Network. These are companies such as Linkshare, Commission Junction, and Shareasale. (I cover this topic in Best Affiliate Marketing Partnerships.)

Amazon, which handles their affiliate marketing program directly, or in-house, would be my pick for the best top program in affiliate marketing. This mother ship of all things retail online has an easy to use cut-and-paste code that is generated for you and contains your affiliate ID number. You can set up widgets, or get a text or dynamic banner link for any of their nearly 15 million items for sale.

If you are looking for an easy way to monetize your website, the CPA networks are an ideal place to start and they are among the best affiliate marketing programs for you to use. It’s a “learn and earn” type of process but your revenue is bound to grow as you gain experience and drive more traffic to your targeted merchants. If you feel you may have some troubles getting started or with building a website that works, check out SiteBuildIt for ideas.

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