Chapter 3. Become an Affiliate Yourself and Earn Income
Chapter Summary |
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Consider this: Joining an affiliate program, in addition to offering one, can be a big benefit to your company. Not only can you add valuable content to your site that will keep consumers coming back to you, but also your offers will be there in front of consumers whenever they are ready to buy. Shoppers do not live on commerce alone. They go to the Web for information as well. By joining selective content affiliate programs, you can add free valuable content to your company’s site—and get paid for it in the process. Why would a content site give you free information and pay you to do it? For the same reason you create an affiliate program—to acquire customers and increase revenue. So why not capitalize on your site traffic and gain additional revenue in the process? In addition to your company becoming an affiliate, it should be mandated that members of your affiliate team create their own sites and become affiliates so they can have a 360-degree understanding of the industry. |
As the old saying goes, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Your affiliates—both content and community sites—are outsourcing their commerce to you, so why don’t you outsource your content to someone else by joining their affiliate program and add value to your site? And here’s the best part—you get paid for it! You can capitalize on your site traffic, offer valuable content to your shoppers, and gain additional revenue in the process.
Do
| DO join content affiliate programs to add valuable content to your site and earn additional revenue at the same time. |
There are a number of companies on the Web today that offer all kinds of content that could fit well on your Web site, and many of these companies will pay you to place their content on your site or link to their content from your site.
Why would they do this? For the same reason you create an affiliate program—to acquire customers and increase revenue. They do this by creating tiny content packages that you place on your Web site, and in return, you feed traffic back to their site. Their give-away content is a link back to full content hosted on their site. And here’s the best part: This valuable content is FREE and there is no cost to join their affiliate program.
These affiliate programs come in many flavors, and there’s a very good chance that one of them would fit your e-commerce site. You can find content sites that provide
News of all types
Articles on many subjects
Web search services right from your site
Local news, weather, entertainment, and events
Sports and stock information
Downloadable music, photos, and Webcasts
Auctions
Even consumer reviews and opinions
Quality content can help you attract potential buyers to your site, but quality content is a lot more expensive to create than most people realize, and maintaining a quality Web site is an even more expensive proposition. If you can reduce your content costs—and even make money doing it—the viability of your e-commerce site may come down to how well you can manage content costs. That’s why joining content affiliate programs will help you add quality content to your site and get paid for doing it.