When we think of affiliate or referral programs as bloggers, we often think of online methods of generating and income through our blog.  But there are other ways, outside of the internet to generate affilite commissions.

One of the absolute best affiliate programs that I’ve come across is one from Windows USA.  I recently got some windows put into my house to replace the junk ones I had.

When I sat down with the Windows USA guy I learned of a special way of advertising that they have.  They’re not like your normal windows company.  They don’t advertise traditionally.  In fact, the only advertising money  they spend is the money they give others for referring them.

All advertising is based solely on affiliate referrals.  They’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and is one of the very first companies that really understood the power of treating your customers right and word of mouth marketing through referral programs.

How To Get Your Free $100

Windows USA referrals program is based on a very simple model, which can be very lucrative for those that participate.

The person making the referal (ME) gets $100 for every person that will sit down with Windows USA and listen to them talk for one hour.  You don’t have to buy anything, just listen to them talk, and tell them to go home.

The person I referred (YOU), will get $100 for listening the the spill for an hour of your time.  You can’t beat $100 and hour.

I know this works because I’m doing it now, and I got referred as well.  They brought the $100 and a free $10 giftcard to the presentation and gave it to me up-front.

Fill This Out For Your $100

If you’re interested in getting $100 for listening to somebody talk for an hour, then please fill out this form.  That’s all there is to it!

Do you know of any off-line referral programs that could use some online marketing?

If you missed my latest post, click here to learn how I make $40-$50 per month with my SMS Blog Feed and only 3 subscribers.

I just read a blog post over at John Chow.com talking about a new plugin for Wordpress that allows you to create a BANS store.

BANS stands for Build A Niche Store, and it’s geared toward Ebay affiliates that are interested in setting up a store to sell items through the Ebay affiliate program.

An Old Idea

The BANS stores have been around for some time and ebay affiliates are making good money from them.  But the BANS software cost $97.  Not to worry though, the new Affomatic Ebay Plugin is absolutely free and allows you to create your own BANS store using your Wordpress blog and your Ebay affiliate Id.

Here is a screenshot of the plugin management page:

To place an item on your blog, you add the link and create a keyword that corresponds, then anywhere you place that keyword on your blog in a tag format ([AffomaticEbay]Keyword[/AffomaticEbay]), the ebay item will display along with your keyword.

The New Idea

Now here’s a twist on everything.  If you already sell your own products or plan on selling your own products, whether you have them listed on ebay yet or not, this plugin is a great way to “double dip”.

What do I mean by “double dip”?

Simply place your products on ebay, then create your wordpress affiliate store, also add your products to this store.  Now whenever someone buys one of your products through your affiliate store, you make the affiliate commission from that sale as well as the normal profit from the actual sale on ebay.  You are essentially double-dipping.

This can help off-set the cost of ebay fees tremendously.

With the Ebay Affiliate program and this new wordpress plugin, there is absolutely no reason you should ever have an online store that doesn’t operate this way.  The internet is evolving and you should too, especially if you’re interested in being successful.

Get the Affomatic Ebay Plugin here.

Let me know what you think about this great new plugin.

More bloggers are using affiliate marketing to make money online than we have ever seen in the past.  Which is why I get asked so often, how I hide my affiliate links.

Not everyone believes in hiding affiliate links, but there are too many disadvantages if you decide against it.  Some that you may be unaware of yourself.

The Advantages Of Hiding Affiliate Links

There are some great advantages for hiding affiliate links.  For both SEO and maximum payout.

1. The Virus Scare - As internet users are becoming more aware that they shouldn’t click on links that look strange to them, because of scams and potential virus threats, they are also refusing to click affiliate links because they look exactly like these strange scam links.  Which link looks more like something you’d be prepared to click? “www.affiliateoffer.com/?pid=%$234%917” or “www.steven-sanders.com/freebook.html“
2. Commission Theft - Many affiliate marketers that might be interested in purchasing something you provide an affiliate link for may manually change the link to match their own affiliate link.  This is done so they can get the commission from your hard work.  Not only is this done manually, but many automated scripts are now being written that will do this.  If you hide your affiliate links, it is impossible for these automated scripts to steal your commissions.
3. Search Engine Optimization - You can modify your links with keywords rather than the long strange looking characters.  And because the links are hidden through redirection from a static html or php page that has noindex on it, search engines shouldn’t look at it.

How to Hide Your Affiliate Links

There are three methods to hiding your affiliate links, but we’re only focusing on two here.  The third is an unnecessary and difficult method.  The following two should be all that anyone ever needs:

Automated Plugins:

Alot of bloggers, like John Chow and Tyler Cruz, use the Wordpress Link Cloak plugin.  With this plugin, you simply enter your affiliate link url, the modified url you would like displayed, and a specific keyword.  Then everytime you write a blog post that contains the specified keyword, it automatically creates your hidden affiliate link.  This cuts back on alot of work, so you can focus more on your blog content rather than worrying about monetizing your posts individually.

Manual Method:

Some bloggers that try to use the automated plugin, find that their theme is laden with errors that don’t fully support the plugin.  But not to worry, there is a manual way, that isn’t as easy to do, but it gets the job done.

To create the hidden affiliate link manually, simply create a new PHP file, and add the following to it:

<?php
//rename the file with a .php extention after putting your affiliate url below

$url=”http://www.affiliateurlhere.com/affiliateid”;
header(’Location: ‘ . $url);
?>

Replace the url with your affiliate url.  Then save the file as whatever url you want the reader to see.  For example, if I created an affiliate link for a great ebook, I would save the file as “ebook.php“, then I would upload it to my server and everytime I wanted that url in my blog post, I would type the url path to “ebook.php“.

Now everytime someone click that link, they would get redirected to your affiliate url.

What are your thoughts on hiding affiliate links?

Many of you know all about Technorati, and probably fewer of you know about Ad Engage.  But even still, I’m willing to bet a very small number of you don’t know that Technorati bought Ad Engage and has now launched Technorati Engage.  An affiliate network that looks like it might be worth some time and effort for bloggers.

Just like with any other affiliate network, Technorati Engage offers something for both publishers and advertisers.

Simply create an account and begin your journey together.

The Ads

Technorati Engage currently offers 125×125 ads for you blog.  You can create as many as 4 or as little as 1 ad in a number of different layouts to fit easily within your existing blog design.  Technorati is planning on adding other ad formats shortly.

How You Get Paid

There are currently two different ways to get paid with Technorati Engage.

1. You set your price per week for private advertisers to put place their banners on your blog.
2. When no advertisers have bought ad space, default CPC (Cost Per Click) ads are placed on your blog.

It’s great that they offer default ads when you have no ad space offers.  This helps alot of newer bloggers get ads on their blog so they can begin making money immediately.

And not many affiliate networks offer pay per click options anymore.  I love having a few pay per click ads on my blog, because not everyone has the money to buy something.

How To Get Started

Here is how to get started, straight from Technorati’s Blog:

You simply enter into the exchange, are reviewed to ensure your site meet Technorati’s content quality standards, and your inventory is made available. We’re reviewing and evaluating the applying blog and social media sites before they are accepted, as well as only giving access to qualified advertisers, to ensure a safe place for brand and engagement marketing. Advertisers are then able to directly target, buy, create, and see the performance of their ads. You can sign up now and come back and grab the ad code next month.

Technorati Engage is currently in its beta phase, so they are only accepting a small number of users, at least until they launch for everyone.  But don’t let that stop you.  Register to be a publisher, and you might find yourself to be one of the lucky ones to get accepted.

You’ll never get anything if you don’t try.

If you’re using Technorati Engage, let me know how it’s working for you.