Online ads on your website?
Can I make money with online affiliate marketing programs? How do affiliate marketing programs work? Good question…you may be wondering this yourself because it does sound like a good way to offset the costs of creating and maintaining a website. Since this is something that my customers ask and also something I would like to know for myself I decided to give it a try and post my findings on this blog.
To start, companies that offer affiliate marketing programs create links to their website that will keep track of where visitors come from. You become an affiliate advertiser by placing these ad links on your website or blog. If a visitor from your site becomes a customer and buys something from the affiliate company, you earn a commission. Sounds good to me…
The following is a rundown of the ads we decided to include on our blog and why we included them:
1. Ad promoting products we sell - the ability to buy our photography online anytime day or night and have orders automatically fulfilled has been an ongoing project at warrendiggles.com. This is why we started an account with Photoshelter for online photo sales and an account with with Imagekind which makes it possible for me to sell framed photography, greeting cards, and gallery wraps at prices I choose. Both companies have excellent interfaces that make the purchasing process easy for customers. The Imagekind ad is receiving prominent placement because it promotes my products and nets me the most. This is not technically an affiliate program but more a direct ad to products we sell through Imagekind.
2. Ad promoting products we use - I liked the idea of being able to advertise books about the photography and marketing industry that I read and could recommend. This led me to the affiliate program at Amazon. Not only can you advertise books you can also advertise products! That’s cool! We then decided it would be a good idea to advertise only brands and actual products we have used in our photography and marketing business. Any product lines you see in this ad have been used by us a professional photography and marketing company.
3. Ads promoting websites we buy from - many companies that sell products online have affiliate programs. We started with Calumet which an excellent resource for photography professionals and enthusiasts a company that I have bought equipment and supplies from for years. There are plans to add 1 or 2 more of this ad style.
4. We also decided to add Google Ad Words to our blog in the form of a banner ad at the bottom of the page. Because Google Ad Words seems to perform well for other websites I decided to add it to this one. The way I set up Google Ad Words is to place ads based on the content of the web page. At first I tried blending the colors with the Photography and Marketing blog but then it didn’t look like Google Ad Words but just more links on the blog so I then decided to go with Google’s branded colors.
From time to time I will post about these online ads and report results.
