Independent Program: Amazon Associates

Amazon’s Associate program is one of the longest running and most successful affiliate programs around. It’s a great scheme because it gives you access to such a wide product inventory. Lately Amazon has greatly improved their offering by introducing a number of new integration methods, such as product clouds, product reviews and rotating banners.

Amazon has two commisson plans. “Performance”  which sees your commission rate increase as you sell more, but suffers from a cap on electronics. Or Classic which is a flat rate but has no caps on it.

Good points

Massive inventory
Lots of implementation methods - links, banners, widgets, astores and more
Good commissions

Bad Points

24 Hour Cookie
Delayed reporting
Can’t dynamically tag affiliate links

Google Adsense

Well, most readers probably already know about Adsense, but this wouldn’t be the exhaustive reference we intend it to be if we didn’t mention it. Google Adsense is a very easy way to monetise your web traffic. You simply sign up with a qualifying site (check guidelines first) and then you paste a bit of code into your website. Google’s Adsense bots check the content of your page and display adverts which match the content of your site. Everytime one of your user clicks on the advert, you get some money. The amount depends on the cost that the advertiser is willing to pay per click.

In addition to this, you can also use Adsense for Search, which allows you to embed a Google search form into your page. When a user searches using it, and then clicks on an advert you get paid.

Google also is getting into the “cost per action” space with Adsense Referrals. With these, you don’t get paid for the click but only if an action is completed such as a purchase, download or signup.

Adsense is a really cool way to introduce yourself to making money online.

Network Review: Affiliate Window

Affiliate Window is a UK based network, with a great range of merchants available, including (at the time of writing) Vodafone, John Lewis, TM Lewin, Prezzybox, Halfords, Toys ‘R’ Us, Hamleys, Dixons, PC World, Currys, Robert Dyas, Travelodge, Heal’s and loads more great, well known brands. If you’re not sure which merchant to work with, Affiliate Window produces a performance index so you can chart improvements, or otherwise, of merchants and see their EPCs.

For the technically minded, the ShopWindow API allows you to tap into the merchant product database and show products on your website. If that’s a little beyond you, make use of easy-to-setup widgets instead.Product feeds are also downloadable as CSV and XML format files.

Payments are available bi-monthly and the affiliate’s user interface makes it easy to pull up your stats. Generating links, and deep links in particular, can be cumbersome and click intensive however.

Other cool stuff from Affiliate Window include emails from the network with embedded tracking links and a downloadable “desktop notifier” which sits in your systems tray and pops up with a ker-ching when a sale comes through, as well as reports on important information and updates from the network.

Affiliate Window is based in London and is a top notch network for any affiliate who is driving UK traffic.

Find out more visiting the website of Affiliate Window

What do you think of Affiliate Window? Why not leave a comment…