We are asked all the time, what we use to promote our website and what companies we are affiliated with. So..... we decided to make this page to help other new website owners gather information that might be useful to them. Below is a list of some of the things that we use to help our website be successful. Keep in mind that the companies we have chosen to be affiliated with relate to the content of our website and may or may not be programs that would benefit your own websites content. Reading and research is always the best in finding out thou. Right! Smileeeeeeeee!
Internet Connection
First of all we choose to use Earthlink as our Internet Connection. We have been with them for several years and would never use anyone else. They have a first rate support system that we wouldn't trade for anything! To us, when your spending alot of time on the Internet....its well worth it to have the best support system you can get so you can be productive.
We have played with several web hosts and you can find an unlimited number of them on the Internet. My favorite is Homestead and that's the one that I use for the website that your on right now. Homestead is exceptional for beginners! Which is actually why we choose to use them exclusively. Earthlink also has web hosting and I just cant say anything bad about Earthlink. We have also used them as well.
It's practically impossible to find humor traffic exchanges and even that much harder to find FREE ones. But for us we lucked up on finding this one
called "Fun Page Exchange." This site is for Humor websites or for websites like ours that have fun or humorous pages that can be exchanged. Right now they let you list up to 200 different web pages to exchange. Its FREE and very easy to use! It has brought in a lot of extra traffic that we normally would not of had. Heres a few of the fun and game pages that we have listed with them. WordLab Game, Hangaroo Game, The Fisher GamePearl Diver Game, Surfs Up Game, Color Test, Ask Guru Joe, ClickNSlide,
Wowww! This one is a winner for us. We chose to try out the Google Adsense program and we absolutely
love it! If your wondering what Google Adsense is.....just look to the right of this page. Do you see the related ads listed on the side? Well those are part of the Google Adsense program. Also if you look to the top of this page here you will see the Google Search Box. Not only can your visitors search the web through Googles Search Engine but they can also do a search of your own site as well! Look at the box......do you see the two * options? One says *Web and the other says *Gone-ta-pott.com (which is this website) This is a great Free Feature for your website to have and a convenient feature for your viewers.
You have to apply with the program and they will check out your website to see if its up to their standards before they approve you to use the Google Ads. Don't be worried if you don't get in on the first application because you can always re-apply a few weeks later. We were not accepted the first time we applied because we had pop-ups on the site that would of interfered with the Google Ads. Once we corrected that we were accepted in, and boyyyyy are we glad too! Not only has this been a helpful addition for our readers but its added related content to our pages that we normally would not of had. Plus the few extra pennies that you make from having the ads doesn't hurt either! Smileeeeeeeeee
Commission Junction & LinkShare are leaders in performance based online marketing. What they actually do is house a whole list of members that you can be affiliated with. Once you apply to a company, and are accepted...you are then able to place their links on your website and you make a commission on any sales that lead to their site from your site. Smileeeeeeeeee
Now their are several programs on the Internet just like these, that we are also members of......but we have choose to only tell you the top performing one's that we use and recommend ok. Let me tell you, these listed here are our top picks and the one's that we feel are the best! They are very professional and don't put up with any crap.
Commission Junction Information --The first time I applied to Commission Junction I didn't read the fine print which said you had to get a certain number of clicks on the ads in order to stay as a member. Well.....at the time I had just started building my website and it actually was not listed on the search engines yet. So naturally no one was looking at the pages so therefore knowone could click on them. So......to my surprise I was dropped from the program! Ouch! But, 3 months later when I knew I could get clicks on the banners I re-applied again and was accepted again. This is a top notch company and if you thinking about placeing banner ads on your website then you really need to check them out and see if their program would work for you. We love them!
To give you an idea of the companies that we joined that are linked to Commission Junction, we have listed some below. Keep in mind that these companies are the one's that we feel were related to the content of our own website. You would most likely pick other companies that relate to the content of your own sites content as well.
Affiliate through Commission Junction
The Wall Street Journal Ads and USA Today Ads were picked to place on our "Headline News" Pages. We have several news related pages in our website (Waves-Of-Reading)So we wanted related news links to tie in with it. We wanted this newspaper because it is so well known and because its the most respected source for newsand business information. . If your customers purchase the print product for Home or Office Delivery of The Wall Street Journal you will receive 30% for each sale. If your customers purchase an online subscription of The Wall Street Journal you will receive 15% of every sale.
Animated Clip Art
Most websites do not use very many animations but because we designed our website to be wimsical, we use heapssss of clip art on our pages. Out of all the clip art that you will see on our pages, about 90% comes from Animation Factory.
If you are an affiliate of them, you Earn a base of 30% on the sale of any of their popular and unique 3D animation and clipart collections, software and subscription services. Top affiliates can increase their commission by an additional 50% with bonuses and performance incentives. Affiliate through Commission Junction.
Cooking
As most of you know.....recipes and cooking tips are a large % of what our website has to offer....so naturally we would look for the top cooking company that we could be affiliated with. Cooking.com is a leading online retailer of kitchenware and houseware items. In business since 1998, their site offers thousands of products from every major kitchen brand and hard to find items in cookware, cutlery, bakeware and small appliances and they also carry smaller items that every kitchen needs such as peelers, graters and strainers, as well as some very unique utensils many cooks probably never knew existed. Their site is user-friendly with easy checkout and prompt delivery. They pride ourselves on providing excellent customer service which makes for a great company to be affiliated with.- in fact, for the fourth year in a row, Cooking.com has received BizRate's Circle of Excellence Award for outstanding customer service.
Members of the Cooking.com Affiliate Network receive a 7% commission on the sale price of every Cooking.com product and 2% commission on the sale price of Partner Products sold through Commission Junction links.
Everybody knows callwave!! Absolutely everybody!! You see their banners everywhere you go on the Internet and thats a real good reason to be affiliated with the company. Normally if you go with ads that are common, you are more likely to get sign ups from it/ and or sales from it. People are less likely to buy from an unknown and its a true fact that people will see an ad around 7 times before they will actually click on it. So..... if you choose banner ads that are already seen over other sites, you are more likely to be the one to get that 7th click.
CallWave appeals to every audience (cell phone, Internet and business users) and all CallWave services are offered with a risk-free trial (no credit card needed). Getting customers to register is a snap! The CallWave “lead based” Affiliate Program has a $50+ EPC!
I used call wave for my computer way before I even thought about building this website so I can vouch for the product. I have to say that I loved it. I used it so I would know when someone was calling on the phone while I was online. Now callwave offers much more.
Another reason why we wanted callwave was because they offer the really large banners. Not a lot of programs offer the larger banners and every time we place one on our pages, we get clicks bouble time! So if any of your programs offer the large banners, use them.
Better Home & Gardens
Our website has many related pages that fit right in with Better Home & Gardens so we really needed to be affiliated with them. They are extreamely well known and its always good to be affiliated with a very popular NAME. If you sign up with them, right now you will receive the following benefits from their affiliate program:
Earn 30% for paid magazine subscriptions: Titles include Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies Home Journal, Decorating Magazine, and many more.
Earn 10% on items from the BHG Online Store: Home decor and furnishings, cooking products, live plants, garden accessories and back issues.
Earn 20% on projects and plans from the BHG Online Store: Titles include Sun Room Shelter, Craft Cottage, Potting Bench, Victorian Arbor and many more.
Affiliate through Commission Junction.
AMAZON
Amazon is one of our TOP PERFORMING affiliate program at this time. Starting in 1996, Amazon Associates program was the first online affiliate program of its kind. Today, it is the largest and most successful online affiliate program, with over 900,000 members joining world wide. If you are a Web site owner, Amazon seller, or Web Developer, you can start earning money and earn up to 10% in referral fees. One reason why Amazon is so successful is because they sale new and used products which is one of the things that make it different from anyone else, therefore it fits the budget of everyone. When you meet the requirements of all of your readers then you have succeeded and you become very popular. Amazon has done just that and have gained a hugeeeee following. This is why we applied with them.
If you would like to see how we use their links just look on our CookBooks , Ocean Magazines, Ocean Sounds, page. Most all of the product links on these pages belong to Amazons program. Another reason why we choose Amazon was because of the large directory of products that you could advertise through them. We are very happy with this program and plan on staying with this company.
Allposters.com is the best poster art site that I've ever seen and that's the truth. You get a % of each item sold from your site and you also .... Recruit Websites to the Affiliates Program and earn up to $8.00 and 5% of every sale they make for LIFE. To qualify, the Websites you recruit must reference your Account Number or Website ID when they fill out our Affiliates Program application. The down side of that is, not a lot of people will go to the trouble of actually typing in someone's referral ID #, especially when its around 8 or 9 numbers long.
The good part is........ if you use the recruit links that they give you (like the one pictured above and the text link below) you don't have to worry about any of that. The link will automatically credit you with the referral.
Allposters was one of the first affiliate sites that we joined. We didn't actually join it for commission of sales nor did we join it to try and get referrals like the program is set up. We actually joined it because we were in need of really great picture content to go in our website and allposters fit the bill. In doing that, we killed two birds with one stone. We used their content to tie into our site where we needed it to accent our pages plus we were advertising to sale the very picture we had showing. To see how we use their pictures just click on these pages. Clam, Crab,
Webmasters --This is a LinkShare rotation banner. You can put as many banners on your page as you want...but Only 1 banner is allowed to rotate. If you belong to a lot of their Merchants....then this would be something you may want to think about doing for your own website..
The AllPosters.com Affiliates Program is a great way to make money with your website.
Link to AllPosters.com and earn 25%-30% of every purchase made by your site visitors at their website. If the visitor decides to purchase within 10 days of their last visit from your website, you'll still earn commission on the sale!
You can link to AllPosters.com from a selection of over hundreds of thousands poster and art print images as well as poster stores and mini stores.
They have posters related to just about everything (e.g.
movies, music, sports, art, animals) so no matter what the content of your site is, you will find images that are a good fit.
It’s easy to sign-up, track your sales, and build links because the site generates all the HTML code for you.
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