After I figured out that I could not do affiliate marketing with Amazon, I went back to the drawing board. There are a lot of opportunities for affiliate marketing, but I needed to find what would work best for me. I was leaning toward trying to become an affiliate marketer for eBay. Then I started looking a little more at my Google stuff. To my surprise Google has an affiliate network. I'm not quite sure how I missed this. The Google Affiliate Network offers the ability to be an affiliate with multiple companies such as Barnes & Noble, Target, Sears and Kohl's. That is only 4 of the almost 900 companies you can be an affiliate for. To become a member of the Google Affiliate Network you must, of course, apply. After you are a member, you then have to apply to each and every "store" you want to be an affiliate for. Then you are given links/ads to post to your blog or website. You can also make your own links/ads for specific products. If someone then clicks on your link/ad and makes a purchase, it's money in your pocket. Not to mention, the little bit of money made by someone just clicking on the link/ad. The amount of money you make off purchases is a percentage of the cost of the item. Usually anywhere from 4-10%. It depends on the item purchased and the "store." At this point, I have only become an affiliate for Barnes & Noble. I will make a 6% commission on purchases through my links/ads.
The application process is fairly simple. It starts by asking if you have a Google Adsense account. All of your earnings will be sent to your Google Adsense account, so you definitely want one of these. Plus, they make you. You must have a Google Adsense account in order to become a member of the Google Affiliate Network. Please refer to my Google Adsense post here to learn how to get an account. After you have a Google Adsense account you need to give the Google Affiliate Network your publisher ID number. You then have to give them your website or blog information. This includes the URL and a short description of your site. That's it. Submit this information, and you will hear back shortly. I think it took about an hour for me to be approved.
The next step is to pick what "stores" you want to be an affiliate for. I picked Barnes & Noble to start as I wanted to make a link for the book I spoke of in my last post. To pick your "stores," you will click on the advertisers tab. Then on the left there is a "Join" button. Click there and take your pick of almost 900 "stores." Click the box to the left of the "store" and hit apply. You then have to wait for their approval. This could take hours or days. When I applied to Barnes & Noble it took about a day to hear back. I have since applied to Target and Kohl's. I have not heard anything from them yet, and it has been over a day now.
After being approved, you are given multiple choices of links/ads that you can post to your website or blog. These are found under the links tab. I was given over 700 link/ads choices for Barnes & Noble. They range in size, color, and type of ad. You can also design your own links/ads as I did with the book to the right. I have since added another link/ad under the book to give you an idea of the type of links/ads you might find. Although, please click on it if you are interested in the sale they are offering. Anyway, it should be very easy to find what would work best for your website or blog. After you sort through and pick which one you want to use, just cut and paste the HTML code into your site. For me, this took some trial and error, but I got it figured out.
Now, to answer the question someone asked a while back ago. "Can you tailor your google ads?" With Google Adsense, the answer is no. With the Google Affiliate Network, the answer is yes.
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