I've mentioned a couple of times in previous postings about the Amazon Associate scheme, so thought I'd do a posting with a bit more information about it.

The Amazon affiliate scheme is great because they have such a huge inventory, there's almost always something you will be able to push to your web visitors, whether it be books, CDs, DVDs, electrical equipment etc.

I also find that I get a much better conversion rate with Amazon links than other merchants. I'm not sure why that is but I suspect it's because Amazon is a name that people have come to trust for online shopping.

Amazon operates in many countries, so you can either just join your local scheme, or if you have ambitions to take over the world, why not join all of them. Links below for the various schemes.

Amazon Associate Signups

Amazon Associates UK
Amazon Associates US
Amazon Associates Canada
Amazon Associates France
Amazon Associates Germany

Missed one? Let me know in the comments section.

As well as picking from a range of text ads, banner ads and search ads, Amazon also has a thriving developer community where you can integrate Amazon inventory into your application or website.

Some people worry that because they don't have the skills, time or knowledge to make their own website, that they won't be able to make money on the internet using affiliate schemes.

But hang on! If you don't have a website, it's still easy to make money on the internet - by using Pay Per Click advertising, such Google Adwords.

Google Adwords are, of course, the text adverts that you see on the right hand side of the screen when you do a Google Search. Basically you sign up, decide what search terms you want to bid on, set a price and away you go. Click here for a more detailed introduction to Google Adwords.

So basically, using Adwords, you can easily guarantee good traffic, who have already expressed an interest in your product by searching for it, and you can send them to your website. And here's the magic part: If you don't have a website, just have your Google Adword send the user directly to your affiliate merchant's website, using your tracking URL.

You don't need a website at all - you're just finding users through keywords advertising and taking them directly to your merchant's product page.

An example:

I sign up as an Amazon Associate, and make a affiliate link for a product, like a boxset of Inspector Morse DVDs, costing £159.99.

The commission on that is about £8.

I create a Google Adwords campaign, bidding 4p a click for keywords like "inspector morse dvd" and "john thaw dvd".

With £8 commission, and 4p per lead, as long as 1 person in 190 who click on the ad decide to buy the boxset - quite likely since we already know they are interested because they searched for it - we will be in profit.

There you go, the easy way to make money online without even having a website.

Well, I just got back from Ad:Tech05 at London's Olympia - the biggest event in the Internet Marketing calendar, apparently!

Exhibitors at the show included TradeDoubler, Google, dgm, 888.com, AffiliateFuture, Guardian Unlimited, Advertising.com, MediaCo, AskJeeves, CasinoBlasters.com, MakeMeTop, Overture, Spannerworks and ThomsonLocal.

Got to be honest and say, I wasn't that impressed. Their website suggested it was the place to go for a webmaster, but to be honest, I didn't see much of interest. There was a couple of stands that had detailed of affiliate schemes, mostly Poker and some Herbal Remedies, and TradeDoubler and dgm were there. But on the whole it was a kind of dry affair. I met a guy, Tom from London, who was wanting to get into affiliate marketing but, like me, he didn't think that the reps on the stands had much that was useful to offer.

The Google University - which sounded like it might have been useful - had ended by the time got there, which was a shame as I didn't see anything before hand saying to get there before then for that part of the Expo.

There was seminars taking place upstairs which may have been good - let me know if they were - but by this point I was kind of disillusioned and decided to hit the road.

So hopefully other people got useful stuff out of it, and I should have stayed for some seminars, as I gather from reading on some Affiliate Forums that they were kind of good, but here's a run down on the freebies I managed to get at least.

A squeezy ball from Thomson Local

A bag from Casale Media - everyone was given one of these

A "Magnetic Body Light" from Google!

My highlight of the day was the fantastic Pizza I had in the Pizza Express next door! Whatever other disappointments there were today, Pizza Express can always be relied upon.

Were you at Ad:Tech05? What freebies did I miss? Did you find it useful? Use the comments feature to share your experiences and thoughts about the event.

Sainsbury's DVD Rental Program has just launched on TradeDoubler and are paying £5 for ever trialist who signs up.

TradeDoubler also carries the affiliate programs for Tesco DVD, ScreenSelect and LoveFilm, so if you're considering building some kind of DVD rental comparison site like Rent-DVDs-Online.Info, TradeDoubler is an affiliate network you need to sign up with.

I haven't really talked much on this blog yet about Adsense from Google, but this really is an essential tool for a webmaster, and one which has been very successul for me over the past 18months.

For anyone that doesn't know, you sign up, and then can generate a piece of Javascript code that you plonk into your HTML. When the page is loaded, Google Mediabots will crawl your website to work out what adverts to serve up for you.

The things you need to think about when placing Google Adsense are the colour, size and position. But rather than go into that, I would point you toward the Google Adsense Webinar which has some really great info on how to maximise your earnings from Adsense.

Labels: adsense, google

Sudoku has been the puzzle sensation of 2005. For those who don't know, it's a crazy little number placement game where the player has to put place the numbers 1-9 on a grid in such a way that every row, column and 3x3 square contains the numbers 1-9 only once.

So how can affiliate marketers cash in on Sudoku?

Sign up with Regnow.com and sell SudokuWorks from Oak Systems to your users. It's a nice little application with various levels of difficulty and an unlimited supply of puzzles.

Sign Up With Regnow
Order Your Own Copy Of SudokuWorks

Just recently joined up with AffiliateWindow.com and its looking pretty good. Like TradeDoubler and Commission Junction, Affiliate Window is an Affiliate Network, with a great spread of merchants for you to promote to your customers, such as Eurobet, PartyPoker and B&Q.

When you sign up, you have to pay £5 for the application, but if you're application is successful, then the £5 gets credited straight back to your account balance.

Sign up with Affiliate Window.

Craziest coincidence was that when I got an email from them confirming my application was successful, I saw their address and realised they are literally a one minute walk from my Greenwich office. Small world, this affiliate marketing, eh?

I've just uploaded the first podcast for this site! Yay!

In episode one, I do an "affiliate clinic" for a website, which means I basically look at a website and try and identify affiliate programs which match up with the content.

Download

Download Podcast #1
Podcast Feed

Links mentioned in the show:

Bizarre Playstation Games Blog
Play-Asia.com
TradeDoubler (to access the GAME & HMV programs)
Commission Junction (to access the eBay programs)
Amazon.com

Comments

Please post any comments on the site or email me

I am a big fan of Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, and am wearing one now. They are long established shirtmakers with their head office in Jerymyn Street, London - the acknowledged home of Shirtmaking.

CT Shirts run a great affiliate scheme through TradeDoubler where you can sell shirts at get 10% commission. They have a fantastic range of colours, plus accessories such as cufflins and tie pins, plus a range for ladies and kids.

As always, selling in context is important, so I set up a site about Shirts And Ties in order to promote CT Shirts. My only problem with them is that the site is for some reason showing prices in USD, which I think may be off putting to UK buyers, but I guess they are trying to get more sales from overseas.

To affiliate for Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, you first need to join TradeDoubler

Party Poker is the biggest Poker site on the net. It listed on the stock exchange in June with a value of £6billion - a staggering amount that shows you that online Poker is big business.

All you need to do is sign up, get your tracker, select a payment plan (more information below), and start sending poker players to PartyPoker.com through your trackers. Select from one of two payment plans: Get paid $65 - $75 per sign up guaranteed or earn 20-25% of the gross revenue generated during the active lifetime of your player's Account while you are an affiliate Party Poker.

Once of the great things about this affiliate scheme is that it's not just limited to web marketing - they provided the tools to help you market it in business cards, flyers, CD-Roms etc. Shortly after I joined up, I got sent a marketing back with colour leaflets, cards and a baseball cap.

With the impressive payouts, Party Poker is a program not to miss.

Ad:Tech05 is taking place on the 28th/29th September at London's Olympia.
It's the only show exclusively dedicated to Online Marketing solutions

Who should attend?

According to the website, "Anyone involved in Online Marketing from concept and strategy to deliverance and campaign management should make this a must attend event exploring the end to end solutions for Online Marketing. From website design, search engine marketing, optimisation, content provision through to on-line research, reporting and campaign management."

Sounds great, see you there! Find out more at the website: Ad:Tech05

If you're not too squeamish about making money from more adult areas, then consider Premium Rate Sex Lines. We recommend PhoneSexMoney - probably the UK's market leader. They wills et up the line and provide the content - all you have to do is promote the number in any way you can, such as email, blog, website or even more traditional methods such as print advertising or word of mouth.

Adult Premium rate lines (prefixed by 090) generally cost the caller £1 or £1.50 a minute. Even the lines which cost less per minute will generally have longer "hold times" so actually the revenue won't be greatly different. There are plenty of providers out there, but with free setup and a good revenue split, PhoneSexMoney would definitely be this blog's recommended partner for pervy phone calls.

PhoneSexMoney have a nice easy to use interface that you can log into and track your earnings. They'll send you payment monthly if your payout is more than £25 (I've never known a month where its not been it's less than that!)

TradeDoubler is the pan European affiliate sales network that can really monetize your site. I've been using TradeDoubler for a while with great success, and the thing I love about it is that you really top quality advertisers/merchants, and their adverts on your site can actually lend a degree of credence and professionalism.

Some of the merchants available on TradeDoubler include high recognition brands such as John Lewis, Jamster, Orange, Carphone Warehouse, PC World, Currys, National Lottery, iTunes, Apple Store and many others.

Having their creatives on your site can really boost its appearance. The most important tip of all though, of course, is to use your adverts in context to get the best results.

The TradeDoubler site has tonnes of functionality in it, like for generating deep links to merchant sites, ad pools for having ad rotation on your site, and content feeds which let you create an online store.

If you have a website that people visit, you need to be with TradeDoubler. End of. Even if you only use it to buy your own stuff and get money back on purchases you'd make anyway!

Join TradeDoubler today.

Affiliate Cash Flow Marketing: A Dirt Cheap Marketing System That Makes Ordinary Affiliates Top Producers In 12 - 18 Months!

Well, the title is quite a mouthful, but I thought I would give this one a go. I checked Amazon.co.uk for books on affiliate marketing, and whilst there were others that looked more weighty or appealing, this was the most up to date I could find. And the internet is such a fast paced industry, I figured that recent would be a good thing.

As it turned, this book was a great read. Sometimes i felt like it was over egging the pudding somewhat, and occasionally it didnt' quite hit the nail on the head, but what I find with material like this is just it reminds you how much you can make off the net through affiliate marketing. Reading this book definitely got me all hyped up, so if you're considering getting into Internet Marketing, or already do it but what a book that will get you sparked up and ready to go out there and make your fortunte - this book may be it.

Order now from Amazon - £13.99

As well as offering great deals on non-geographic phone numbers, like codes beginning with 0845, 0870 etc, UK2 Numbers have a system whereby you can get paid a cut based on the profits that come from phonecalls generated to numbers created by your referrals. Not made anything of this myself yet, but if you can recommend a call centre, you maybe laughing!

Visiti UK2 Numbers

Regnow from Digital River is a fantastic money making opportunity for website owners. It provides the means why which software publishers can get their software marketed and sold by affiliates, who then get a commission for every sale, sometimes up to 40% or 50%!

It has tonnes of well known applications on there, such as McAfee Anti Virus and eTrust Pest Patrol through to some less well known gems. You sign up with the publishers, and then use the links on your website which will take customers straight through to payment pages. Effectively, you can build your own online store without ever dealing with stock, inventory, postage, packing or disgruntled customers!

You can see how I built an online store with it here.

Sign up with Regnow today! The great thing about is you really do generate sales quickly, if you have some half decent traffic, and you see proper income racking up in no time.

Written by the very well respected (in the Affiliate industry) Mke Delrue, this eBook gives clear details on the methods he follows that he claims pays him over $18,000 a month, without even having a website and spending no more than an hour a day working on it.

Mike's model, explained across 81 pages, is based on Pay Per Click marketing campaigns, and how to really exploit the best keywords at the minimum price. The book contains over 2500 of the best keywords, along with a guide on the maximum you should pay. Mike also includes 8 Solid Tips to Skyrocket Your Affiliate Conversions, which are probably worth the price of the book alone.

The good thing about this eBook is that it comes with a no questions ask, 90 day money back guarantee so if you bought it and decided it wasn't for you, you'll get your money back with no hassles.

Order Affiliate Money Tree Handbook