Affiliate programs can be a good way to monetize your blog and the amount of money you earn will vary greatly from blog to blog. Factors that can affect how much you earn are traffic, blog niche, content and many more. You want the products that you are advertising via affiliates to be something that users you are drawing to your blog will be interested in. I use many different affiliates and some I make decent money with and there are some that I have never earned a penny from. I have listed below the affiliate programs that I participate in, my experience with them and some of my favorite merchants from each.
Escalate Network: Some months I do good with Escalate and others I do not. They run many different programs and there constantly new ones coming in. I use Escalate quite a bit for coupons and they also have a lot of offers for surveys, games and Vistaprint. This program does not have a minimum earning amount before you get paid.
Amazon Associates: Everyone knows who Amazon is but it can be tricky to make money with their affiliate programs. I seem to earn the most from Kindle books and the rest is all over the place. I try to pick a keyword or two in each of my posts to link to a relevant product on Amazon with varying results. This program does not have a minimum earning amount before you get paid.
ebay Partner Network: ebay is another one that is hit and miss. I try to look at their daily deals since they always have free shipping and post items from there that seem to be selling well. This program does not have a minimum earning amount before you get paid.
Infolinks: Infolinks is for text ads. You can install the code on your blog or they have a plugin for WordPress that does all of the work for you. It will scan your posts for text keywords that it can match advertisers to. When the text is hovered over an ad will pop up and the visitor can click it to visit the advertisers site. This program has a minimum earning of $50 before you will get paid.
Share A Sale: Share A Sale is one of the most popular affiliate programs with a lot of very good and popular merchants. I especially like Zulily, who is one of their merchants. I was with Zulily when they were on the Google Affiliate Network before they closed down and I was doing pretty well with them for many months. Like many other things the earnings started falling off. i have made some money with Zulily since they moved to Share A Sale but nothing like I used to make months ago. Other merchants that I like to work with on Share A Sale are Discountmags.com and Cross Country Cafe which sells K-cups at great prices. This program has a minimum earning of $50 before you will get paid.
SocialSpark: This program will help find sponsored posts for your blog. Once you create an account it gets your web stats info from Google Analytics. When a company is interested in getting sponsored posts they target blogs on SocialSpark based off of your Google Analytics data and other info. You will receive a lead that will tell you about the possible post and how much you are being offered. You can then confirm that you are interested or you can choose to negotiate the price. Getting a lead does not mean that you are getting the job, it just lets the company get a feel for who all is interested. You will be contacted later with an offer if accepted. This program has a minimum earning of $50 before you will get paid.
MySavings Media: MySavings Media is similar to Escalate and has a lot of the same advertisers and their payouts are usually about the same. I also use MySavings to rotate my coupon links so I can earn some money on each. This program has a minimum earning of $50 before you will get paid.
Glitter Network: Glitter Network is another one that is similar to Escalate and in face the layout of their site is alost identical. I have run across a few offers on Glitter that I did not find on Escalate. This program does not have a minimum earning amount before you get paid.
Swagbucks: Swagbcuks is unique because you get paid in forms of rewards instead of cash, my favorite are the Amazon Gift Codes. You can earn Swagbucks from searching the internet, taking surveys, answering polls and a few other ways. You can also earn Swagbucks by referring people and you will get 1 Swagbuck for every Swagbuck your referral earns up to 1,000 Swagbucks. I have earned over 13,000 Swagbucks so far and have received over $150 in Amazon Gift Codes.
Link Vehicle: This is another program that can help you get sponsored posts. I think I have written 3 posts for companies through them and the amount paid is normally only $10-$15 so not a huge amount of earning there.
Eric@thatdarneddad.com says
Traffic is the key to any great affiliate marketing plan. Without it, It dosen’t matter what network you belong to. Build the traffic first!
Jacqueline Jordan says
Very helpful and informative. Thanks so much! I list my giveaways on your site and appreciate the opportunity to do so as well.
tonygreene113 says
eBay network has been a real barn burner for me during the holidays. As long as I can find out what the top sellers are, I can make a listings page and get paid for clicks on items as well as the purchase of goodies.
Nahojib says
Thank you for all of your helpful information on blogging. It helps those of us who are new to this field.