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A Practical Guide To Websites For Small Local Businesses

Making Your Website Pay For Itself

 

You may not know this, but you can generate income directly from your site with very little work on your part. You can make your website pay for itself. You can even generate extra income to supplement your business. How? Through affiliate programs or Google AdSense.

 

Affiliate Programs

What is an affiliate program? Basically you sell someone else's product for a commission. All you need is a website. You do not need a merchant account. You do not need to ship or track inventory. Your only job is to send potential customers to the websites of your merchant partners. They do the selling, process the order and ship it out. You just collect your commission on each sale.

 

Here is how it works step-by-step:

  • Find an affiliate program that fits in with the theme of your business. (More information on finding affiliate programs below.)
  • Join the affiliate program. Usually this will be a matter of filling out a form on the company's website.
  • The seller gives you a special link to put on your website.
  • When somebody visiting your website clicks on the link, they are 'marked' as coming from your site.
  • If that person buys something from the merchant, you receive a commission.

 

Some companies run their own affiliate programs and some use affiliate management companies. These management companies provide a central location where you can sign up to sell products for several merchants. The top affiliate management programs are:

 

 

It costs nothing to join these programs and they give you a wide range of products and services to choose from.

Some companies run their own affiliate programs. If there is a specific product you are interested in selling, go to that product's website and look for a link that says "affiliates" or "partners." Or check one of these sites:

 

http://www.associateprograms.com/

http://www.affiliate-programs-guide.com/

http://www.affiliateguide.com/

Affiliate programs vary widely, so make sure you read any affiliate agreement carefully. A good affiliate program should have these features:

  • free to join
  • 15%-25% commission minimum
  • ability to track repeat customers (so you get commissions when your customer buys again)
  • good affiliate support (prompt answers to your questions; ideas for boosting sales)
  • Online statistics so you can see your commission figures, if your links are getting clicked, etc.

 

Keep in mind that you want to promote products that fit in with your site. If a landscaper recommends a site for gardening tools, visitors are likely to check it out. They assume you know a lot about gardening tools in your line of work. But if you promote a site selling cell phones, they will be less likely to click that link. After all, they have no reason to believe you are a cell phone expert (even if you are one).

Affiliate programs will not make you a great deal of money (unless you devote a lot of time and energy to them) but can at least offset some of your website expenses.

To generate meaningful income you would have to approach this differently from the rest of your website. Making money from an affiliate program is really a numbers game. The more people that see your affiliate link, the better the odds of someone clicking on it and then buying. So you want to get more than just local customers to those pages where you have your affiliate links.

Let me show you an example from one of my websites, http://www.workathomestrategies.com/dropship.html . This one simple page brings in between $100.00 and $150.00 each month just from people who find it through the search engines. I have put no money and nearly zero effort into promoting it. But in a year this single page pays for the entire site (created with SiteBuildIt, by the way) several times over.

 

A full discussion of affiliate program requires a book in itself. Fortunately, one of the best courses on the subject is available for free. The Affiliate Master Course tells you everything you need to know to succeed using affiliate programs. Everything is spelled out, step by step, in plain English. (The author, Ken Evoy, is also the man behind SiteBuildIt which was originally created for people promoting affiliate programs). You can download a free copy of The Affiliate Master Course here:

http://free-business-information.com/affiliate.html

 

 

Google AdSense

Remember those ads that show up on the search results page of Google? (see Section VII - Google AdWords) Well now those ads can also show up on participating websites and Google will pay a share of the revenue that those ads generate.

 

All you need to do is sign up for Google AdSense. They give you a few lines of code that you put on each webpage where you want ads to appear. Google then automatically delivers text (or image) ads that are precisely targeted, on a page-by-page basis, to your site's content. Ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful. That means lots of clicks and every click earns you money.

Google does not disclose how much you are paid per click nor is anyone allowed under the terms of Google's agreement to specify how much money they earn. I can tell you that everyone I've spoken to is quite happy with Google AdSense. I can say that the annual ad income on my SBI site has been more than enough to pay for the site.

One word of caution: I would not suggest putting Google ads on your homepage. It would distract from your sales message. After all, you do not want people clicking away to another site when you are trying to sell your services to them. However, Google ads would be fine on articles or other internal pages on your site.

Go to:

https://www.google.com/adsense/



DISCLAIMER AND/OR LEGAL NOTICES: While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this book, the Author assumes no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. If advice concerning legal or related matters is needed, the services of a qualified professional should be sought. This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, accounting or general business advice.