Can You Make Money From Home With Affiliate Progams

Do you have a dream? Does your dream include making money from home through internet marketing? If so, you're one of millions of people with an internet marketing dream. An internet marketing dream that includes making enough money to say goodby to your boss, make ends meet, maybe buy a new house or a second car.

You hop online one night to shop for a birthday gift for your dad and you keep seeing a link at the bottom of the store pages that says "Click here to become an affiliate". What the heck is an affiliate? Checking it out a bit further you find the explanation.

An affiliate promotes the goods and services of someone else. An affiliate is then paid for each sale by the merchant. Hmmm this sounds like a pretty good deal! You already have a web site, all you have to do is download some of these banners and links and your site will become a cash cow. You begin dreaming about all the things your internet marketing business will be able to buy.

Six months later, working from home every spare minute, you have made one sale and have a check that will cover the cost of a bag of dog food.

What happened? Can you really make money online with affiliate programs? The answer is yes with a huge BUT. There are several things you need to know about affiliate programs before you ever add a single link to your site.

The internet marketing programs you sign up with need to match the content on your internet marketing site. If your site is about cross stitch patterns you won't get many clicks on banners for weight lifting equipment! You need to know and understand the needs of YOUR visitors. Only sign up with merchants and internet marketing programs that meet those needs.

A catchy banner pulls more clicks than a boring banner. How well has your merchant done making banners? Are the banners and graphics the merchant has provided interesting, exciting, something people will want to click on? If you don't have the graphics ability to make your own banners to replace boring ones, look for another merchant selling similar products who has a better graphics department. Your internet marketing efforts and your work at home business will fail if visitors do not click on your ads and links.

Location is important. Just like in the real world, location on a web page is vital. Banners at the top of the page will usually get more clicks than banners in the middle or at the bottom.

Don't limit your internet marketing on behalf of your merchant to banners. If you have articles on your site, or you have a blog, a MySpace page, Squidoo - anything with text, include text links to your merchants. These often pull better than even the best graphics. You could write a sentence about cross stitch patterns that would read something like this.

"I used embroidery thread from Widgets Embroidery Works to complete this pattern and found the thread was vibrant, colorful and knotted easily."

Link "Widgets Embroidery Works" to your merchant with your affiliate link. Text links used in this fashion often work better in internet marketing efforts than banners.

Add text above or below the banner. This is a simple trick that can really pay off. Instead of just a "bare banner" add a line of text with your affiliate link and with NO break above or below the banner (or both). Something like "For the best embroidery thread on the planet click here".

Watch your merchant stats. If you have clicks on advertising but no sales, drop the merchant and choose another one selling similar products. If you've sent a thousand visitors to the merchant site without making a sale, that merchant isn't converting your traffic to sales. It may be that your internet marketing efforts are being wasted on this merchant.

Yes you can make money online, yes you can work from home and have an internet business that makes money and you can use affiliate sales to get that money. But if you don't follow these simple guidelines, you won't be able to buy a tankful of gas from your affiliate checks, much less a new corvette to park in your driveway!

No embroidery patterns were injured in any way in the research for this article.

About The Author-- Cyndi Parker writes articles on various subjects including Internet Marketing. Find out how you can make money at home at my website at my website at http://www.internetmarketingdreams.com

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