Illustration of a Working Affiliate Program

Since starting the internet business assistance program this year, I've spoken with people all around the country interested in having their own internet business but they are not sure if they realistically have the time to dedicate and don't really understand how adding links to a website and writing content can lead to long term income. Adding links and writing content are the two basic things necessary to build a successful affiliate program. An affiliate program is one of the simplest ways to make money on the internet. The basics is that you earn a commission each time someone how followed one of your links to a site buys something.

In order to help people better understand affiliate programs, I've put together an illustration using a set of sites that were created a few months ago. Drew-shoes.com was setup only a couple of months ago as an affiliate program promoting shoes from ShoeBuy.com I found that shoebuy has nearly every shoe under the sun available for sale, but there are so many brands that it is difficult for customers to readily find what they are looking for. So, I created a simple site that organized one brand of shoes (Drew Shoes) into a structure that makes it easier to see what is available on ShoeBuy. The site has a header and a left column that look similar to ShoeBuy and then Drew Shoes are categorized and organized so that shoppers can see every brand of shoe very quickly and find what they are looking for relatively quickly.

Now, if a customer finds a shoe that is of interest to them and they click on it, it then takes the customer to that shoe on ShoeBuy.com and so they can see availability and pricing. Should they decide to buy the shoe, ShoeBuy will pay me 17% of the sale price as a referral fee. Should they decide to wait and buy later it is ok because when the customer initially went to their site, a tracking cookie was downloaded onto the customer's computer so that ShoeBuy would recognize them as a referral from me then next time they came back (as long as it was within 60 days and as long as they do no delete their cookies in that same time).

In addition to links going directly to the shoes of interest, the header and left column of each page on my site also link over to the home page of ShoeBuy so that if someone does not find the shoe they are looking for and wants to get to a directory of shoes to browse or search a different category, they can go to ShoeBuy and make their search and I will still collect a commission on any purchases over the next 60 days.

This new affiliate program has only been in operation for about 3 months. The first month about 30 people clicked on links to ShoeBuy, the Second month there was also about 30 clicks, and the third month there were about 90 clicks. To date we have earned about $40 in commissions for our work which seems like very little, but this is with a site that has not been around long enough to be well ranked for anything but the most obscure keywords. One year from now when our search engine optimization efforts have been recognized, this simple site should be averaging far more than the $13 per month we've currently achieved.

This example is designed to illustrate a real affiliate program in action to help people better understand how the system works and why I say that the two keys to affiliate success are content (for SEO) and links. Anyone can be successful with an affiliate program if they can consistently dedicate time to search engine optimization and building links to the products they want to promote, and if you don't know where to start, check out the internet business assistance program (yourbetterbuy.com) where you can partner with someone who can give you the tools and education to do it right.


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Distributed by the Internet Business Assistance program, where you can start an Internet Home Based Business with the help of an experienced internet business owner and it won't cost a penny. Be a success just like shoeannex.com who is now selling Florsheim Work Shoes Online.