Affiliate Money

Should you make money with your website?

A stupid question? Not really. A lot of you, especially the celebrity fans, out there have created your websites because of a passion you have or the respect you have for a celebrity. You are a fan and you want the world to know it -- and to know all about your favorite celeb. So, would it be right for you also to make money from it as well?

A good website take time and money. Although you are not being a fan to create a profit, a little extra income can offset the cost of maintaining your site and your time - and may even give you enough money to purchase that concert ticket the next time your celeb is in town.

What is an affiliate relationship?

Simply speaking - an affiliate relationship is where you make money from one of your visitors going to an affiliate's site through a link from your site. If they purchase something at the affiliate's website, you get a percentage of the sale.

To illustrate how an affiliate relationship works - see below:

1. You make arrangements with ABYZ Co. to place a link to their website on your own site
2. Place the links on your site (with the coding they give you)
3. Wait for visitors to click on the link
4. A visitor clicks on the link which bring them from your website to the affiliate website
5. Invisible to either you or the visitor, the "click" is being tracked by a behind the scenes software. That will notify the affiliate that this visitor was referred by you.
6. Hopefully, the visitor will purchase something at the affiliate's website. If they do, you will receive either a percentage of the sale or a flat fee depending upon your relationship.
7. Wait for your check to arrive [Note: usually there is a minimum amount to be reached before payment is sent]

What are the best affiliate programs?

This is not an easy question to answer and much of it depends upon the type of website you have. We at www.PopStarsPlus.com have gone with the larger and more traditional affiliate organizations.

If you go to any of our celebrity pages, on PopStarsPlus you will see links to Amazon, Ebay, AllPosters and Contact Any Celebrity. These are solid programs, and we highly recommend all of them, but they are not the only ones out there. There are other similar affiliate programs that could easily be found on the web, and some that offer higher returns than the ones we have chosen. In addition, we have also partnered with ClickBank, Art.com and LinkShare on some of the other websites we maintain. [Be wary - some affiliate programs do not want to share sites or pages with other similar affiliate programs]

Why did we choose the ones we did? Because these programs are established and would provide our customers with good products and services. For some of our specialty sites, we have also used some much smaller programs or individual sites - but we did a lot of research first to ensure that the sites would be a good match to us and our visitors.

To give you an idea of how we use some of these affiliates, take a look at some of our sites:

• Amazon, Ebay, AllPosters and Contact Any Celebrity: www.PopStarsPlus.com (go to any celebrity)
• LinkShare.com: www.GiftIdeasPlus.com (go to any holiday)
• ClickBank.com: www.BusinessForMyself.com (go to any theme)
• Art.com: www.ArtandSell.com (go to the famous artists section) [under construction]
• Some smaller independent programs: www.ChanukahGiftsPlus.com (go to any product)

For information on how to become an affiliate partner with some of these sites you can go to the "Making Money" page on PopStarsPlus.com at http://www.popstarsplus.com/makemoney.htm.

So go out there and start some affiliate partnerships and make some money to help offset the cost of your site, or to just have some extra pocket money for those rainy days.

Until next time . . .

I.R.