Making money with your site

Affiliate or sponsor programs give you a commission for adding links to your site to theirs. Some pay you by leads or sign ups, or how many people clicked the link/banner that leads to their site, or by sales that your links generate. Once you pick an affiliate program, go through all their merchants to see what would best fit you site. Then get the links and add them to your site to generate some cash! It is easier then you think.

Build your own website and promote it first.
If you build a decent website that gets a bit of traffic, you are half way there. Merchants will not accept you if your site is crappy and uninteresting and/or hard to navigate. You are a gateway for their company and you are asking to become a partner with them so they generally chose sites that look good with good content that in turn makes them look good. Potential customers are also less likely to by things through a crappy site.. Merchants will also not touch you if you use stolen or copyrighted graphics or content or if you have illegal content i.e. child porn or bestiality and the likes and you should not have that kind of stuff on your site anyway. Aside from sick, it is illegal and(rightfully) get you thrown in jail..

Join programs that integrate with your site.
This just makes sense, if you think that you can just add links to your site willie nillie and you can make money you will be disappointed, for instance Disney products generally will not sell on a hardcore vampire site just as Viagra will not sell much on a Barney site. You will do much better if you have products and affiliates that blend well with your site, it is also a good idea to recommend what you are advertising or review products in some way. IE recommending books or movies that you like.

Using Affiliates for content
You can also use affiliates to generate content for your site. For instance if you join a program that sell posters you can have the artwork that you are trying to sell in an art gallery like I did in my gallery with the Escher and Giger pieces. You can do the same with books and videos or your favorite bands..

Affiliate programs that I recommend

Commission Junction
If you are going to join just one affiliate program this is the one for you. Commission Junction has thousands of merchants to choose from... Including Hot Topic, video and book stores, and much more.. I've made hundreds of $$$ with them and they make it easy because they generate all the links for you! I Highly Recommend joining this program if you are looking to make a couple bucks through your site.

AllPosters.com
Has an Affiliate Program that is a great way to make money and have great content for your website. Link to AllPosters.com and earn 20%-25% of every purchase made by your site visitors at their website. Plus, you get a free poster after your first sale.

You can link to AllPosters.com from a selection of over 50,000 poster and art print images as well as banners and search boxes. They have images related to just about everything (e.g. movies, music, sports, art, animals) so no matter what the content of your site, you will find images to fit. It’s easy to sign-up, track your sales, and build links because the site generates all the HTML for you.
Sign up today!