2. Pay Per Lead
This is where a user clicks through your link and then fills out a form and clicks ‘send’ so that the affiliated site gets a lead. The form will usually at a minimum ask for their name, phone number and email. You get paid an agreed amount every time someone fills out this contact form and clicks on send. The affiliated site will then check the lead for authenticity by making contact, ensuring that the lead is genuine (so don’t get ideas of sending the whole BT phone book because they will not pay out).
This is one affiliate link I promote heavily. I affiliate to many loan sites and they pay me up to £115 per authentic lead. Their criteria are that the lead must be over the age of 18, a home owner and looking to raise finance. If this is the case I get paid. I roughly get one in four leads approved and I have these links dotted about on my site. I reckon I earn about £3,000 to £4,000 per month from these links and all the payments go direct into my bank account. Now that’s what I call passive! All I have to do is make sure my sites are live (by making sure I’m up to date with my credit card payments for the site) and I can be assured that someone every day will click on one of those links so I get paid.
3. Pay Per Sale
This is where a user clicks on your link and actually buys on the affiliated site. So the user clicks on your link, visits the affiliated site, likes what they see and buys within a certain period of time. So they could visit the affiliated site, come away from it and come back seven days later, due to finding the site again, and buy and you will get paid. The only way you wouldn’t get paid is if they found the affiliated site through someone else’s affiliate link and not yours. The period of time is set by the website selling the stuff and is usually 30 days.
The sorts of commission you can get are a percentage of sale or a fixed amount per sale. Another exciting feature of pay per sale is that you can get lifetime commissions. So if the affiliated site offers 30 days tracking and a sale happens which results in the registering of a user and you get a percentage of sales of a user for life, then you can earn an income for life.
So, for example, this is a case that actually happens to me. I have several users who have registered on a gambling site through one of my affiliate links and I earn a lifetime commission on the profits on these users (i.e. the personal losses of these users) as long as they use this gambling site. I earn around £200 to £300 per month for this and I really do nothing because as long as they play (and lose!) I will still get paid no matter what I do. Just imagine if you had 1,000 registered users on a gambling site that paid out like this… you’d never have to work again!
List Of Middlemen Websites
I’m sure you’re itching to know where to find these middlemen websites aren’t you? If not you should be! You can find all the middlemen websites at:
How To Choose Who To Be Affiliated With
There are only two rules you need to follow when choosing who to affiliate with.
- The sites most relevant to your site.
- The sites that pay well.
1. The Sites Most Relevant To Your Site
If you have a site about French bulldogs then there is no point trying to recommend they open up a casino account with 888.com even if they do pay £100 per sign up! This is because your readers will simply be not interested in this because they come to you because of your information on French bulldogs. You may get the odd person interested in French bulldogs and in your offer of opening up a casino account, but the likelihood is very low and even though you might get a sale the amount of credibility you will lose will not make it worth it.
So in this example of a website about French bulldogs your readers would be much more receptive to you telling them about Direct Line’s pet insurance which only costs £8 per month. They could sign up via your link and they will be unaware that for every click/sign up/sale you earn 50p/£2/£10 or whatever it is that Direct Line pay out. The conversion rate will be a lot higher than a gambling site!
This is why it is handy to have a site that you are personally interested in because you will have an intrinsic idea of what is of interest to your readers; you will have an understanding of their wants, desires and needs. If you know that vet bills are rising beyond inflation and you know that French bulldogs are more susceptible to infection, injuries, etc then pet insurance for vet bills will be a hot topic and well received. If you know rough costs of pet insurance to be £10 per month and Direct Line are offering £8 per month then you know that Direct Line’s offer is cheap and will convert better. So really understanding your reader will help you choose the affiliated sites so that they get clicked and you get paid.
Since I am in the property investment game I know that property investors are interested in:
- raising finance cheaply and quickly
- finding cheap and below market properties
- money making ideas
- obtaining their credit file online.
I also know they are not interested in:
- gambling sites
- broadband and telephone call savings
- getting a deal on electrical goods.
Do you know how I know this? Because I have seen what has worked on my own sites and how much I’ve earned from having affiliated links for all of the things listed above. I too got tempted by the big commissions offered by gambling sites and realised that even though you get a few sign ups you don’t really earn as much as if you did a proper targeted offer that is relevant to your reader.
I have around 20,000 subscribers on my property investment list and if I do a gambling promotion I might get one sign up which pays £60, but compare this to a loan promotion which pays £75 per lead
where I might get 40 people making an application. So the gambling promotion earns me 1 × £60 = £60 and the loan promotion earns 40 × £75 = £3,000. So you can see how easy it is for me to decide what to promote and what not.
So browse the middlemen websites merchants’ categories and see what categories would be of interest to your readers. Then look into the detail of what each merchant sells and think whether any of their products or services would be of interest. If so, sign up (if it pays well - see below), get your unique link, bung it on your site or newsletter and send out. If you add a sales pitch to it then even better! Don’t forget what I taught you in Chapter 3 about creating a sales pitch.