Links, Affiliates, Banners and Referrals

Today I'm going guide you through a few of the terms that often used on blogs and websites like this, and how you can profit from using them.


Links

"Links" are ways of getting from one website to another through a simple mouse click (or from one part of a website to another part). But why would you want to link to somebody else's site? The answer is simply because you might be able to profit from send people their. Some sites will pay you for sending traffic their way, others for people performing actions once there (like buying something). People know that you are the one who has sent the traffic to their site because you would have used an "affiliate link".

Affiliates
Affiliate links are links that contain a unique id for you (or your site).  When someone clicks on a link of this type you will be associated with that person and their actions.  Some sites will put information in cookies to make sure that even if they don't do anything for a few days the "affiliate" will get the benefit.  And the benefit of being an affiliate is usually money.

Some sites run their own affiliate programme and others outsource this work to companies like Commission Junction.

Banners
One of the best places to have your affiliate links are inside banners (like the one below).  Banners can come in many shapes and sizes and are usually made available in a variety of designs, so you should pick the one that best fits your blog or website.

Banners are also very useful thinks to place inside your signatures for any relevant forums.  This also means the more you blog the better more you affiliate link will to available for others to click on.

Referrals
Referrals are the people you have sent to a site and have signed up to that site.  The vast majority of referrals are automatically associated with you because they have used your affiliate link. Sometimes you get a one-time payment from a referral signing up to a site, other times this person is associated with you for a duration of time (or indefinitely) and you get paid more the more they do on a site (this is how Paid to Click sites usually work).

So my advice to you is to use affiliate links and banners when are where you can to get referrals and earn passive income.

Forums

When you first start to earn money online you can spend a lot of time searching the web for information on which sites are the most trustworthy and where to be spending your time for a good return.  One of the best resources for finding information is on forums.

Forums are large repositories of information, from people posting about their experiences to debate the merits of different sites.  Furthermore, forums are great for asking your own questions and getting quick answers.

I've used a few forums and each forum can be useful in it's own way, but one forum I'm very active on is The Truth About Online Money Making.  This forum is still new (which appealed to me because I'm still new) but is run by some very knowledgable people.  I found I could post questions there and get honest answers quickly.  The people on this forum are friendly and helpful.  Even for someone like me I find new ways of earning online everyday.

The Truth About Online Money Making has different sections for whether you are looking to ask questions, find information, read blogs, share links or just fancy a fun chat.

If you have any questions for me you can head over to The Truth About Online Money Making and post there.

Mike and Stu

My Average Day

I have an email asking me what my average day was like - how much time I spend earning on the web and what my income was.  I've decided the best way to answer that is by recording my day and tallying up at the end, so here goes...

9.00am-9.30am - Time for a coffee!  I turn on the computer and head straight over to Inbox Dollars.  My first 5 searched of the day will be found through this site, which will earn me $0.06.  The site I search for is  Slice the Pie!  And over the next 30 minutes I drink my coffee and listen to music - posting reviews as I listen.  I posted 8 reviews and made $1.89.

9.30am-10.00am - I look at my Adf.ly account and my AdSense, noting that I made $0.21 and $0.89, respectively, before turning my attention to the boring part of the morning... my Paid To Click sites.  I have 6 of these on the go at the moment (2 because of the PTC Experiment) and the rest being tested for a review on the blog. NeoBux made me about $0.50 with referrals (in the last 24 hours) and the rest which includes the likes of ClixSense, PTCBox and BuxP have probably made only $0.25, with varying numbers of personal and referral clicks. It takes 30 minutes to get through this lot, partly because I have an increasing number of referrals to manage.

10.00am-4.00pm - It's time to do what I get paid for and go to work.  I'll complete this post later!  Still to do: forums, more music reviews, and surveys.

4.00pm-4.45pm - I decide to check out e-rewards, Valued Opinions and NPolls find a couple of surveys.  Surveys are one of the most profitable ways to make money on the internet and in 1 hour I have made £1.50 on Valued Opinions, $0.20 on NPolls  and the equivalent of $2 on e-rewards.  Usually if I can't find surveys on these sites there are others I will check out.

4.45pm-5.30pm - This is the last stint on me earning on the internet for the day and I spend it on Slice the Pie, earning a further $2.51, but also seeing that my referrals have been busy and added a further $0.38 to that sum.

In total today:

• Adverts = $1.10
• PTCs = $0.75
• Surveys = $4.20
• Music reviewing = $4.40

Grand total = $10.45 for 2.5 hours work, though there are other days when this can be higher this seems average, bringing in $70-75 per week (quite a nice 2nd income earned for the time most people send on Facebook).

AdSense

Well in creating this blog one of the first things I did was "monetise" the page.  Monetise the word Google uses for placing ads on the screen, in the hope that people click on the ads - and in fact they are simple urls which take you to a website, so google ads can often be great ways of navigating around the web on a set topic.

So, what do you get paid... well with Google AdSense this can vary quite widely from a few pence for a click to over a pound.  It is the company being linked through the ad who sets this price, but they can't be too stingy with their cash because AdSense users can block ad providers if they don't pay enough.

The trick with monetising is to make the ads fit your site, so that they don't become an inconvenience.  I have a number of sites and blogs, earning vastly different amounts.  For example, one site I have is called Instant Scores, which allows users to see live scores and league tables.  The larger AdSense ad is on the right-hand side, and the smaller ones placed to break up the text.

The type of blog or website you have is very important when looking to monetise a site.  Informative blogs and places of obtaining updated information often make the most money, so look to produce content that fits this remit.  Build your blog with advertising in mind, rather than an after thought and play with the layout to optimise the number of clicks you get.

AdSense used to have a referral programme but doesn't anymore - meaning you only earn for clicks on ads you get on your blog or website, but beware.  You can't encourage people to click your ads and you can't do it yourself.  If this happens you can lose all the money you've earned.

When you get to £10, you can have AdSense send you a cheque or transfer the money into your account.  AdSense can be used as the only advertiser on your site or as one of many.

I'm sure I'll come back to AdSense (and the alternatives) in the future, so I'll leave this for now and report how my AdSense earning mount up for this page.