No Products...Lots Of Money Affiliate Program From The Canadian Perspective

It is possible to earn money without having an inventory when you use affiliate programs. Even large companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon, and eBay have affiliates. An outstanding feature of most programs is using cookies to identify the customers who enter through your site so that every time one of them buys something, you get paid! 

How cool is that?

A lot has been written about how to succeed as an affiliate. That's not the purpose of this article. Here, we want to describe several very successful affiliate sites so you can see how some other Web owners are actually doing this. It's really not so difficult, but it will take a little time to keep the sites fresh. When you start making $20,000 a month like one of our examples, you won't even notice the time.

Most online businesses offering products and services have affiliate or associate programs that attract thousands of sales people who aren't on the payroll and are only paid when a sale is made. Affiliates generate many sales at a very reasonable cost to the e-businesses. And you don't need to worry about shipping and billing—your affiliate company does it for you. Everybody wins.

An affiliate business is a wonderful way to begin as an entrepreneur on the Internet. It's usually free to be an affiliate and all of these businesses can be operated part time. This is the real value in affiliate programs: they are just about the perfect home-based business. You don't need to make or buy your own products to sell, you just promote products and services others furnish for you to sell to your own customers. 

When you look at the sites we're going to discuss, don't be afraid of having several products that are almost alike. Why? It's like going to a camera store; you want to see a wide selection of cameras so you can find the one best suited for your needs. So it is with your Website carrying a lot of similar things. Your customer doesn't have to look all over the place to find what they really want.

Another thing about carrying lots of similar items is the increased traffic to your site. If you promote your site properly, people looking for the best product will be drawn to your site from different perspectives, but they are all coming to your site. You'll always win when this happens.

Affiliate programs are an easy way for Canadians to establish a home-based business of their own. This country has a very large land mass with relatively few people. World Book Encyclopedia says about 62% of the country's population lives in Ontario and Quebec; the rest of the citizens live throughout the remaining provinces and territories. Instead of time consuming travel, slow mail, or expensive advertising, the home-based affiliate can instantly communicate with everyone in Canada who may be looking-and with the entire rest of the world as well. All one needs are a computer, an internet service provider (ISP), a domain name, and a Web host. 

Let's now discuss a few deal and coupon promoters to give you an idea how they work. You may want to get a new URL and just develop it a day at a time. The sites we'll talk about were not built in a day and they are, in fact, ongoing, unfinished works in progress. Start small and continue to build your site.

There are many bargain sites you can certainly find by searching Google or Google Canada for "bargains, coupons, deals" or "Canada bargains, coupons, deals;" this last term will show you sites featuring mainly Canadian companies. The first few sites we examine are located in the US, and the last ones are strictly Canadian (though I hope they are selling all over the world).

Three or four years ago, I read somewhere about one of the early sites that was doing well. It was Fatwallet.com owned by Tim Storm; this site has continued to grow and is highly visible on the Internet. It is so visible, it was sued by-and they countersued-several large companies including Wal-Mart in 2002 according to a Wired News article by Brian McWilliams.

Take a look at the Fatwallet.com (http://www.fatwallet.com/) Website operated from a US location. This site uses cash back, coupons, and offers of good deals as well as a forum to attract visitors. Not everything on the site pays money for sales, but a lot of them do. When you click the "stores" tab you immediately see some really big retailers, all of whom offer affiliate arrangements. Right before your eyes are the likes of Amazon.com, Dell, Circuit City, and many others. This is how these sites make money. You can do this, too. The secret is driving traffic to your Website.

The source of my statement about making $20,000 a month comes from an article by Michael V. Copeland in Business 2.0, December 2004. This is about Ben's Bargain Center (http://www.bensbargains.net/), a site heavily dependent on affiliate commissions. The owner, Benjamin Chiu, operates this from his condo in California and never touches anything but his computer. The site operates as an automatic selling machine all day and all night every single day of the year. The potential for a site like this is enormous. According to the article, just four of the largest affiliate programs paid about $1.25 Billion USD in 2004. Get your share!

To draw traffic, Ben's Bargains uses deals, rebates, and coupon offers he obtains from numerous sources he has developed. Many deals have been posted within the last few hours each day, making the site always of interest with fresh information for customers. Other traffic generators are an instant price comparison form at the top of the page, an RSS feed for those wanting to be instantly advised of new bargains, and links to various charities. This last feature seems to be something many businesses are advocating. It not only generates goodwill among customers, but satisfies the requirement of successful business owners to return some of their success for the good of society.

Another well-designed US site is xpBargains (http://www.xpbargains.com/). Like other discount sites many of their best buys are listed immediately when you get to their home page. But the thing that first caught my eye was the Overstock.com banner at the top of the page. To be truthful, I clicked that banner and bought something from Overstock.com (xpBargains will receive an affiliate commission on my purchase)! Isn't that cool? It's what these Websites are all about. And guess what? Every one of their main pages has this same Overstock.com banner. Overstock is a really big discounter themselves, so you can imagine what kind of commissions xpBargains receives.

To attract traffic, this site also provides RSS feeds to keep you abreast of all new deals that become available. Traffic is also built with a free newsletter and a forum. Other attractions include many free trade publications, a "Recommend us" section, and several special areas like xpCoupons have links right back to the main xpBargains sales sites. 

The final US site we examine, Keepmoney (http://www.keepmoney.com/free/coupons.html), uses a different approach. This site uses many free offers, a newsletter, and some "how to" information as traffic attracters. One of the links about operating affiliate sites points to well-known Sitesell. It is certain that anything bought from Sitesell will pay a generous commission to Keepmoney.

What is different here is rather than list every new offer or deal, which requires a lot of work, they link directly to the stores or sites offering the items. This is an easier way to present a lot of affiliate sites and the beginner probably should use this as a model. 

Always look for ways to make more money for your site. Keepmoney uses a fairly recent introduction from Google, AdSense (http://www.google.ca/ads/). You can see how it works at the bottom of the Keepmoney home page; the ads can be placed wherever you wish on your pages. This is a free service and can produce additional income for your site; on the same page is AdWords which you could use to bring traffic to you. There is a cost for AdWords.

Now let's discuss a few Canadian discount Websites.

HomeGrown Advertising Inc. (http://www.express-marketing.com/links/retail/page1.html) is a true home-based Canadian business. It started in 1992 in the basement of Monty Loree's home as an advertising business. It has grown to seven employees and is now located in their own building. This Website is oriented toward advertising and marketing and so is a little different from the affiliate sites we've studied. But this is indeed an income generating site. The banner and link exchange programs have the ability to drive traffic to HomeGrown as well as generate income if they sell any credits.

Affiliate income partners are dispersed among all the helpful sites, but many visitors will buy things from these affiliate partners. An example is the "Purchase Ads with AdLandPro" link in the middle of the page on Viral Marketing. AdLand not only provides traffic but it also pays actual commissions for some referrals. Other links on the site do the same things. Particularly significant income producers are the Google AdSense advertisements on every single page of this Website. Consider these for your sites as well.

Frugal Shopper Canada (http://www.frugalshopper.ca/onlinedeals/olcall.asp) is another site that has chosen the easier way of showing the latest offers: they mostly link directly to the supplier offering the deals. This Website emphasizes Canadian firms almost exclusively and it makes certain you know who their primary affiliate companies are. Links to the major affiliate partners are shown at the top of the left sidebar on every page of the Website. A lot of free stuff, charity links, a forum, and "Tell a Friend" are all ways the Frugal Shopper uses to attract traffic. Never forget traffic has to be in sufficient volume for anyone to prosper on the Net; do whatever it takes to increase visitors to your site.

Each of the Websites we have discussed has something a little different about it. 

Canada Retail.ca (http://www.canadaretail.ca/Hotdeals.html) is a strictly Canadian site (it does have a link to US advertisers) that says you can shop over 1,000 Canadian online stores. Traffic is driven by a lot of free items along with a site where advertisers are invited to list their URL for free; these listings appear in one of the many categories shown on the home page. Free listings are rotated down the page and may eventually rotate off. They also have a paid listing program. 

Canada Retail also takes the easier way to list current best offers: they link directly to the supplier URLs. At this writing, they have three pages of "Hot Deals," and all but one I checked has an affiliate program providing many income sources for the Website. Another stream of income is the use of AdSense ads from Google on most of the pages.

Our final Website using affiliate programs for income is ProudCanadians.com (http://www.proudcanadians.com/). We've noted that every one of the sites discussed has a little different idea of how best to generate income. This one features a big hitter, eBay.ca (has an affiliate program) at the top right of home page and at the bottom it has paid advertising available; these are two very different income sources. Find a Date is another affiliate partner on home page and there are others on the site. 

ProudCanadians uses a Canada only policy to draw Canadian traffic, and a lot of advertisers are local. They will not accept advertising that offers goods or services not originating in Canada. Visitors are attracted by many businesses in a lot of different categories and many individual sites listed separately right in the middle of their home page. All these merchants offer things people find on search engines; whenever someone finds a keyword offered by one of these companies they may be referred to ProudCanadians. Lots of traffic generates this way which enhances its value as an advertising medium and furnishes possible customers for its affiliate programs. It's interesting this site doesn't use AdSense.

Online purchases are growing rapidly so this is an exceptionally good time to get into this kind of affiliate/discount driven Website. Study these examples and pick and use what you consider the best features for you with your degree of skill. As your knowledge improves you can expand what you do.

The easiest way to go is to link to your affiliate sites. Next you might begin to find five or 10 fresh deals and list them individually. When your traffic begins to develop you can add free and paid advertising.

Here's to $20,000 a month!