What you need to know about earning commissions from affiliate links on your blog
A brief overview of earning money on your blog through affiliate networks
Wouldn’t it be great if you could get paid a commission for every visitor you send to a third party website that purchases a product on that website?
Enter affiliate marketing. You place a link to a product on your blog and get a percentage of every sale that link is responsible for. All of the payment processing is handled by the affiliate program — including the sales transactions (customer to vendor) and the commission crediting (vendor to affiliate).
Sounds like it would be a hassle to set-up and manage though.
Not so. Setting up an affiliate account is easier than setting up a blog which, judging from your interest in reading this post, you probably have already done.
The two major affiliate networks
Before you place affiliate links on your blog and start earning, you will obviously need to determine which affiliate network is right for you.
#1 ClickBank
If you are looking for the largest selection of products to choose from, ClickBank is the way to go. ClickBank is the affiliate network that has been around the longest and is the network of choice for most major vendors and affiliates. After you’ve made your first $100 with ClickBank, you can begin receiving payments on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. ClickBank will send you checks first but, after your first two checks, you can begin getting payments wired directly to your checking account.
I have used ClickBank for over 2 years and they have never missed a payment. ClickBank does however receive criticism for its link tracking system. Vendors and affiliates who have used ClickBank for a long know that occasional anomalies in sales and conversion rates (e.g.: 3 sales per day on average then 0 sales per day for 2 weeks) are to be expected.
ClickBank Pros:
- Most reputable affiliate/vendor system
- Free to promote products
- Largest selection of digital product
- Weekly payments
- Payments via bank wiring
- Strict regulation of products (products are only admitted to the CB marketplace if they meet quality guidelines, which is a good thing for product promoters)
ClickBank Cons:
- $50 payment if you want to create your own product (free to promote other peoples’ products) and $25 for every product you create after the first
- Mysteriously buggy (but bearable) tracking system
- No vendor/affiliate communication
- 10% allowance deduction each pay period (ClickBank will withhold 10% of your earnings each pay period but release them two months after)
#2 Paydotcom
Paydotcom is the new kid on the block but offers some promising features. You won’t find a selection of digital products comparable to the size of ClickBank’s market place but you will have the ability to receive payments through PayPal, which is sometimes a necessity for foreign marketers. You can also sell physical products as well as digital products (unlike ClickBank which only allows digital products).
Paydotcom Pros:
- Free to promote and free to create products (Paydotcom makes money by earning $.50 – $1.50 out of the affiliates’ cut for each transaction)
- Receive payments through PayPal
- Sell physical products as well as digital
- No pre-approval for products
- Vendor/affiliate communication (which means you can communicate with the people who create the products you choose to promote)
Paydotcom Cons:
- Small product selection compared to ClickBank
- No option to receive payments via checking account or bank wiring
- No product vetting (which means more work for the affiliate who has to find products that are legitimate)
Once you have created an account with an affiliate program, it’s as easy as copy and pasting the affiliate link for the products you want to promote into your blog posts or banner spaces.
Affiliate links will not hurt search engine rankings but it’s a good idea to not have too many affiliate links on each page as they can reduce the quality of your copy significantly.
If you do not want to endorse products (an earn a commission) by placing affiliate links in the text of your blog, you should consider the option of placing a widget which serves just like a normal advertisement. Both ClickBank and Paydotcom provide widget codes that, once placed on your blog, will display affiliate links relevant to the pages they appear on. The ad widgets work just like Google AdSense units.
The legalities of placing affiliate links on your blog
Some people find the practice of placing affiliate links that promote digital products in blog posts duplicitous because the product endorser is getting a percentage of every sale. To combat this, most bloggers will place a disclaimer somewhere on the blog that explicitly states the owner receives a commission for some products linked to on the site. Not only does this protect the blogger from a legal standpoint but also provides a good explanation to readers.
It is a good idea, however, to also state in the legal disclaimer that each of the products are tested personally and that the endorsements do not involve lying (e.g.: the endorser says “I used this product and it was great,” when the product was never used by the endorser).
Tags: affiliate marketing, clickbank
I personally prefer using individual item like hosting and template to grab the direct affiliate.. Heard a lot about Clickbank and CJ but never been so lucky yet….