Getting Started With Affiliate Ads

When someone is thinking of a new venture, they usually want to know what to expect before they start the process. I know there are many bloggers-to-be who are wondering about the process of monetizing a blog with affiliate ads, so here’s some terms and information about using Affiliate Ads on your blog and what to expect when dealing with advertisers.

Affiliates Advertisers are advertising networks who agree to advertise on blogs and pay you a fee or commission for sales or referrals made on the blog. The advertiser becomes your “associate” or “affiliate” and you become their “affiliate”. So when you deal with an advertiser they will call you or your blog an affiliate because it is like two companies calling each other associates/affiliates. The advertisers under the Affiliate Networks are called merchants. (i.e. Pepperjam is an Affiliate Network that has several merchants under them and Sesame Street is one of them. So Sesame Street is a merchant under the Pepperjam Network.)

It does not cost you anything to put ads on your blog. (Remember, you are doing a service for them by allowing them to advertise on your blog!) Some ads pay better than others, so of course you want to find the best deals possible. You also want to choose ads that you feel your readers will be attracted to and that fit your overall topic. You can remove the ads anytime you want as there is no contract saying you have to keep affiliate ads on for a certain period of time. It’s your blog, so it is up to you but you should leave them on for a while and experiment to see which ones are working best for you.   

Publisher – When you (as a blogger) sign up with an Affiliate Advertiser or Network, you are considered a publisher because you are publishing content, or posts, on your blog. You first need a blog up and running to sign up with an Affiliate Advertiser (they will ask for your blog’s url or e-mail address… you can’t sign up with advertisers before you have a blog). You will need some posts on your blog for them to look at your site and accept you as a publisher. Don’t worry that you have to be a best selling author to be accepted as a publisher. (lol) That’s not what they are looking for, they just need to know that your blog has a reason for being and is not a SPAM blog or a porn site as most Affiliate Ads will not associate with porn sites.

Pay Out’s – A pay out is the amount of money the advertiser holds in your account before they will pay you and the amounts differ from Network to Network. For instance, Pepperjam has a pay out of $25., where some are $50. or $100. This means that the Advertiser who has a payout of $50 will not give you a payment until you have built up $50 in your account. (most bloggers look for the lowest pay out possible so they can get the money that is owed to them quickly!)

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Here are some of the usual ways that Affiliate Ads pay a blogger/publisher for advertising on his/her blog:

Pay Per Click – you are compensated for sending traffic to the merchant. You don’t get a lot of money for pay per click, but it can add up.

Pay Per Sale – you are compensated by the merchant if the a sale or purchase is generated from the affiliate ad on your site.

Pay Per Lead – the merchant agrees to pay for a qualified (or sometimes unqualifed) lead, which doesn’t always work well because it’s up to the merchant to decide if they’ll pay for the lead.

Commission fee – With some Affiliate Ad Networks, A Pay Per Lead or Pay Per Sale could also be called a “commission”. It is a set amount or percentage that you’ll get paid for making the sale. With commissions you will have to wait a certain amount of time for the deal to be completed. (This is because a customer can change their mind and stop a transaction within a month so the advertiser cannot give you the commission until the deal is safe. This time period is usually one month but may take 2 months for you to have it in your account.)

Referral – you are compensated a certain amount of money for each person that you refer to the advertiser. You get a referral fee every time a blogger (publisher) signs up with an Affiliate Advertiser from the ad on your blog. (and of course another blogger get a referral fee when you sign up with them!)

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Applying for Affiliate Ads  – To apply for an affiliate advertiser or Network, you COULD find out the name of the Affiliate you want and go directly to them… BUT why would you do that when you have a great opportunity to help out a fellow blogger by becoming a referral? After all, what goes around comes around and you want others to use your ads so we should be helping each other out with referrals. Be a good blogger friend and find the advertiser you want from one of your fellow bloggers and click on their ad so they can get a little money out of the deal.  I bought my blog so at first a few of my ads were just transferred over to my name, but after that I made sure I went to other blogs to get my ads and give a referral fee to my fellow bloggers. It’s a win-win situation! It doesn’t take anything away from you and you will be giving another blogger some income by being a referral.

Getting Accepted – After you have applied, the Affiliate Advertiser will check out your blog to make sure it is appropriate for them to place their ads on and to make sure you have some content… so start getting some posts on your blog if you plan to have ads on it! It will take a day or two for the advertiser to accept you as an affiliate, but that depends on the Network you’re dealing with as some could take longer. If you are not accepted by an advertiser, find out why because it could be a mistake.

One advertiser refused me because they said I had “inappropriate content on my blog”.. when I called them about it, they checked again and said it was indeed a mistake…. When they looked up MomsCashBlog, they went to a “mom porn site” by mistake! (It seems there are some naughty Mom’s out there.. but I’m not one of them! lol) We had a good laugh and he told me “Sorry, your site is VERY appropriate and it has great content… you’re definitely accepted!” So, if you get rejected from an advertiser, find out why and fix it, or try again later when you have more posts, or just go onto another advertisers who WILL accept you.

Choosing ads and putting them on your site -- Once on the Affiliate Network site, there will be categories for you to go thru the list of advertisers and choose the ones you would like on your blog. It should show you how much commission you will receive with each of them, either in percentages or a set amount. You will see the various display ads (images) that are available. For each ad, there are usually a few sizes and types to select from, such as banner ads, block ads, or the small square 125×125 pixel ads. 

The advertiser will provide the HTML code for each display ad, and they also provide the code for text link ads too. (You can use either a text link ad or a display ad, or both to promote the ad on your site) You don’t need to know anything about HTML to do this because you will be cutting and pasting the code into a widget or adblocks… depending on which theme you have and/or how you choose to use it.

Putting Ads in Your Sidebar – The absolute best tutorial I have found that explains how to put ads in your wordpress sidebar . If you haven’t been to Blogwell.com you will definitely want to save them in your favorites as they have some expertly  written posts on blogs.  But if you need more information on putting ads on your blog, let me know with a comment or e-mail me at jj@momscashblog.com.