Monetizing your Website: How do I choose an Affiliate Program?

Monetizing your site is a matter of preference in my opinion. There are so many different “offers” out there, choosing what works for you is a personal matter. Myself, I hate ads on a website and nothing is uglier than having Google ads splattered all over the place! If you use Google AdSense, they pretty much own that space on your website and they even dictate how you can promote your site, and how many page views is too many and so on. Here is my philosophy on this.

I will only advertise products that I use, and/or that I believe in. There are many different Affiliate Programs out there, and yes, you can sign up with all of them if you want, and to find the products that you use or want to promote, you may have to join multiple programs. One thing to remember is that many people, including me, use ad blocking software, so make sure that you use both text and image links, the text links won’t get blocked.

How do you find them? Well, I could list a few here, but I won’t, why? Because I believe that just signing up with these programs does you no good if you don’t know where to find the product you wish to promote, so, go to the website of that product or company and look for a link that says “Affiliate” or something close, click that link and it will set you up, but be forewarned, many advertisers are picky and may not approve you! I am still waiting on approval from a couple of them now, wish me luck!

Also, remember, when promoting these ads, if you use a traffic exchange, do not put pages that contain ads in your surf rotation, these could be considered a bad thing and get you kicked out, I know Google will drop you in a hurry! So, always be careful!

Now, I am going to list the products that I am affiliated with, yes, if you click the link and purchase something, I will get paid a buck or two, thanks in advance! As I stated before, these are products that I believe in and/or use myself, so I know they are good companies.

The first one, is by far the most important of them all, if you have a computer, and surf the Internet, you need a good anti-virus program! I have used several, and believe me, they are not all the same!
Enjoy $10 Off F-Secure Internet Security: Now only: $49.99

If your current anti-virus software is about to renew, give F-Secure a shot, here is a bonus, unlike the others, you can install F-Secure on up to three computers with just the one license!

Second,if you don’t have a Web Host yet, I use Hostmonster, I have been with them almost a year now, and switched from Yahoo. Yahoo is great for a starter, but it is not good for using Wordpress, there are way to many restrictions on file types that you can upload, so, you are limited on what you can do with your site. Yes, this is an affiliate link, and yes, if you signup with Hostmonster I will get paid a few bucks, here is the deal, I will deduct what Hostmonster pays me, if you register your domain with them and hire me to build your site! Is that fair or what?

Maybe you never heard of Hostmonster, they are the same folks as Bluehost , if you prefer, check them out, as far as I know, the only difference is the name.

Take a look at Hostmonster You can even Demo the control panel and see how it works, I have never been so happy as with Hostmonster If I need support, I get a human on the phone quick, and they speak english, I love it!

Just in case you have never heard of TigerDirect.com, below is a banner that will take you there. TigerDirect.com is where I buy everything I may need for my computer, like hard to find stuff for older machines, and they have saved me a lot of money over the years. I have hunted all over the Internet for better prices, but there are none and the service is fantastic, my orders have been shipped and delivered as fast or faster than anything I have ever ordered online, this is definitely a company that I use and trust!

Just in case you need business cards, a very useful tool to promote your website, I use Overnight Prints for mine, they are the best I found on the web, as far as quality and price, you can’t beat them!

I hope that this information is helpful, if you need any of these products, check them out, I know you won’t be disappointed and maybe I’ll make a buck or two!

Recent Projects: PattiMace.com, your choice for Real Estate in the Houston area!

This is one of my favorite sites, since the release of WordPress 2.5, things haven’t been the same. There are so many plugins available to turn a simple Blog into just about anything you want.

Why would you want to do that, you may ask? Affordability is one answer, go take a peek at this site, PattiMace.com, it uses a real estate plugin that allows you to post home listings, and even creates an .xml file for an RSS feed, that can be used to add your listings feed to Google Base and others, so that your listings are available in places like Google Real estate! That will increase the visibility and make it easier for people to find you!

This is the main reason for using the WordPress format, which is highly customizable, through themes and plugins, to get your pages picked up by the search engines! After all, having a website that nobody sees is a waste of server space!

You might wonder why I would tell the world about how easy it is to build a Real Estate website? That is clear, there are way too many “professional” website designers out there, that are just too expensive for the average real estate agent to use, so, they try to do something themselves, or get into expensive hosting contracts that are not always in their best interest. It isn’t that these designers are bad, they just are too expensive for a small business to use. Large real estate brokerages can do this, and rightly so, take a look at the Houston Association of Realtors website (HAR), this is where the properties are listed with MLS, and is a wonderful site, but, as an agent, or even a small brokerage, building something like this is way out of reach.

So, an agent needs a way to stand out, this is Patti’s page at HAR, you would never find her, unless she was to get extremely lucky and someone was to find her using HAR’s Member Finder, in other words, a needle in a haystack! By having her own site, that is also functional, and very visible, she can have the clients find her, and avoid that luck of the draw search process, do you know how many real estate agents there are in Houston?

Using the Wordress Blog, she can write useful posts that help people, even if they have no interest in buying a home in her area! The more she writes, the more her sites page rank will grow, the better that page rank gets, more people will be able to find her even easier.

Helping people, what a concept? I live by the philosophy that “if you help enough people get what they want or need, you will in turn, get what you want or need”, this is the purpose of this site, helping people get a website that will work for them, and be affordable for just about anyone.

For anyone that finds this post, and is looking to relocate to the Houston area, or just wanting to buy or sell a home in the Houston area, I can tell you this, Patti is a dedicated agent, and having a real estate agent that is dedicated to helping you, is a very important thing! So, take a peek at her site, send her an email, and let her help you.

If you are a real estate agent, or anyone needing an affordable website, drop me a note, and I will either build you a website, or help you to build your own.