Sunday, March 14, 2010

Affiliate Marketing Part 1

I've been studying affiliate marketing lately, and its quite an interesting phenomenon. There really are people out there making big bucks from it.
For any readers who aren't familiar with affiliate marketing, its getting paid to promote other websites through ads and links.
Its all about getting big web traffic, and getting the links in front of them.
There can be big money in it, but a lot of work has to go into creating content to draw an audience. Remember, there's no such thing as a free lunch. A realistic expectation would be an extra few hundred bucks a month, maybe up to a thousand or two if you could create a popular site. That's pretty good though, right? Especially since its working around the clock for you, with a worldwide audience and minimal maintenance. And the sky's the limit, so as your site(s) get more popular, you will earn more and more!

In this post, we will concentrate on dating sites. Based on my research thus far, they seem to pay their affiliates pretty well. They also are super easy to sign up for, which makes them a great place to start.

FriendFinder may be the best one I have found so far. They pay $30 per pay member you refer, or $2 for free female members and $1 for free male members. The option for free members seems like the smart choice to me, I would imagine most people out there go for the free account. One of the coolest things about this program is that you can promote all the different sites they own. They have about 18 different sites that cater to specific needs. A well placed ad for these specific markets could be powerful.

Anastasia Dating has many options for its affiliates. $250 per first order, $125 per order, or $5 for each referral who creates an account. I could see that adding up very quickly.

MegaFriends is another good one to check out. It offers a recurring of 40% of membership sales. That means that if someone signs up and pays per month, you are getting that 40% every time they pay! That is nothing to sneeze at, and if you could get a handful of people on there, some nice extra dollars could be heading your way.

There are a TON of other dating sites out there that offer good deals too. I think the key to affiliate marketing is being involved in a lot of different programs, so do some research and check them out!

Coming next: Part 2