What I learned Wednesday: Affiliates Part 3

Want to learn how to make money with your blog?  Check out my What I learned Wednesday posts here.

This is going to be my third and final posts on affiliates.  Next week, I'll start on a new topic.

I had some more time this week, so I researched a few more affiliate networks.  One of my pet peeves with these websites is that you really can't see anything about the site until you join it.  There isn't a posting of sample ads listed.  There isn't a range of payouts amounts listed.  It's very general and vague until you join.  And some of the sites are harder to join than others.  Some require your social security number on a tax form.  I'm sure that it is legitimate, but it never sits well with me to give out my SS# for any reason (I don't even like to give it to doctor's offices).

So here's the lowdown on the sites I visited:

Logical Media - I reviewed this pretty extensively in last week's post.

My Savings Media - After reading other bloggers posts about this, I decided to join this network.  Of course, like other affilitate networks, I couldn't find out too much ahead of time.  To join this site does require your SS# and a tax form to be filled out online.  I am now waiting for a phone call from my affiliate manager.  You cannot logon to the site without being approved by phone first.

Escalate Media - I looked over the home page at this site. It said:

We look for affiliates that use a combination of different marketing tactics, including search engine marketing, email marketing, contextual advertising, social marketing and banner ads.

That kind of intimidated me because I don't know what most of those tactics are.  I'm not planning on emailing out ads.  I don't know what it means to do social marketing (maybe on social network sites) and I don't know much about making banner ads.  So I chose not to join that site.  Maybe if I learn more about that form of advertising, I will reconsider.

Panthera Network - The first two requirements to join this site are as follows:

1. Only publishers with a web site are accepted.

2. You MUST have a top-level domain where a WHOIS search will show you or your company
as the registered owner of the site. No free hosting web sites will be approved.

Since Blogger is free hosting site and I am not listed as the owner of the site, I can't become an affiliate with Panthera.

Commission Junction - I spent a lot of time here.  It seems like it's a very large network with lots of choices of ads.  That can be good or bad.  Too many choices can be very overwhelming to me.  The other drawback to this site is that it appears that you only get paid if the clicker takes an action, i.e. registers at a site or buys a product.  You do not get paid just for people clicking on your ads.  So, for now, I decided to forgo becoming an affiliate there.

Amazon Associates - Notice all those links I have to books and products on Amazon?  That is part of being an Amazon Associate.  If you buy something after clicking on one of those links, I get a small commission from it.  If you blog on blogger, this is really easy to set up and use.  You don't have to pick ads and copy html into your design.  You sign up through the "monetize" tab in your editing menu.  A new box will appear in your editing screen to the right of where you type your blog post.  It has a search box that you use to find the product you'd like to link up in your post.  When you find the product, you can choose to link up a picture, a link or both.  And that's it.  Super easy.

Google Affiliate Network and Google AdSense - These 2 programs work in conjunction with each other, although I am having difficulties getting them to work together.  Google AdSense is another affiliate that is very easy to sign up with if you are on Blogger.  Sign up under the "Monetize" tab on your design page.  Choose where you want the ads to appear (side bar, under each post, in a feed reader, etc) and Google does the rest.  They choose the ad and put it there.  You get paid based on clicks, impressions (how many times the page is viewed) and leads (sign-ups).  Google Affiliate is supposed to work with adsense somehow, but I can't get Google Affiliate to recognize my AdSense affiliate number.  And I can't get an account set up without it.  So I'm still working on that one.


I hope this helps some of you and encourages you to play around with ads on your blog.  I think Amy said it best,

Experiment, experiment, experiment! Experiment with different networks, ad sizes, text links vs. images, placement on your page, etc. Sometimes there are vast differences in revenue when small changes are made!

Good luck affiliating!!