Affiliate Program Strategy
by Sanders Consultation Group Plus

Making Money From Your Website

So you have a website online and you have some traffic built, but now you are looking for affiliate programs to help make money with your site. That is the reason that you put a site online isn't it? Or maybe you just put something online about a hobby, or something else that you have an interest in. It doesn't really matter what you put online or why you did it, but it is important to think about the things here before you decide to try and convert that site into a potential cash stream.

It is an inevitable thing. As a site grows, it needs a cash stream to help support site growth. As the need becomes apparent, people all too often forget to put the same kind of planning into affiliate programs that they put into their site design. Then later on as they continue to have visitors but no additional income stream, they begin to wonder why that has happened. Most times it comes from an improper fit of affiliate program to site visitor compositions.

The secret lies in providing affiliate advertising your site visitors want. Another secret is providing content your visitors want so that they will come back. By increasing visitor retention and return, and by carefully choosing affiliate programs that fit your visitor types, you increase the chances of clicks for your affiliate advertisements. Knowing the types of visitors that frequent your site is critical in choosing the right affiliate programs.

Affiliate Programs and Visitor Matching
What kind of person visits my site?

What did you design your site to accomplish? In your own mind, what kind of people come to your site? These questions are only part of the work you need to do on this subject. The more information that you can gather from your visitors, the better equipped you will be to add affiliate programs that your visitors will click on. Those clicks are what will generate you money and diversify your online investment.

In your own mind, what did you design your site to accomplish?

You had a thought in mind when you put your site online. What was that thought? Who did you think would visit your site? If you designed your site because of your passion or love for a particular subject, then you already have some possibilities for the kinds of things that would appeal to your visitors. What things appeal to you? That is often a missed information opportunity. An old saying says "Birds of a feather flock together." If you like certain things, and also had the passion to put the site together on that topic, then others interested in that same topic could have some of the same interests that you do. Looking into the other questions below will help to further decide if your visitors fall in line with your own interests. If they do, then you are one of the lucky ones. If not, then more research will be required for you to achieve the goals you seek.

Where did the visitor come from?

This is one of the best ways to try to step into your visitor's shoes and learn more about them. You need this kind of information to figure them out. If you have a paid host, then you should already have access to their logs. Those logs can tell you where your visitors came from, what browser they were using, their screen resolutions and color settings, and a host of other useful information. Browser and screen resolutions help you make design decisions for your future site enhancements.

If you are hosted on a free domain like Geocities, where this site is presently hosted, then the chances are you don't have log access. But that doesn't mean that you can't get the same kind of information from other free sources. Using this site as an example, I am using one of Hitbox's free services to track that kind of information for me. Through a browser interface, I can check to see where my visitors came from, how long they spent at the site, how far they probed into the site pages, browser and screen resolution settings, windows version, and a host of other information.

Once you have this kind of information, and know where the visitors are coming from, then you need to take some time and visit the sites they are coming from. What kind of information do the sites they come from offer? Can you find anything on their site that tells you their main company mission? What kind of person would visit that kind of a site? What need does that site fulfill?

Lets say that they come from a site like ZDnet.com. That tells me that the visitor had a somewhat technical background and was probably a webmaster or designer. Depending on where they linked in from would also give more answers to the question. If they came from the free download area, then that would also tell me that they could be subjected to freebie types of affiliate offers. If they came from a secure page, then that also leads to the possibilities that they are used to making online purchases, and if they provided their credit card information to one site for products/survives, then the chances are that they would provide that kind of information to another site that peaks their interest.

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About the Author

James R. Sanders is the owner of Sanders Consultation Group Plus. He has been a webmaster and website designer since 1997. He has also been involved in self employment ventures since 1992. He is presently a contributing author of NewbieHangout. His writing is targeted to webmasters, would be webmasters, website designers, would be website designers, self employed, or those researching information looking for solutions to questions associated with design, business operations, and promotion today. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self employed people achieve their goals in today's competitive global market. You can subscribe to his free newsletters at SCGP - Newsletter.

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