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Using Commission Junction

You are now almost ready to make some money. You have developed some traffic, so let's find some companies who will pay you a commission for sending them some of that traffic.

On the Internet, most successful companies have an "affiliate program". That means that they are willing to pay a commission to ANYONE who sends them new customers. You are going to become that someone.

Instead of looking for companies individually, I recommend two networks whose sole purpose is to connect companies to affiliates. These networks are generally free. The two I recommend are:

1. Commission Junction http://www.CommissionJunction.com 

2. ClickBank http://www.ClickBank.com 

Both of these have tools that will tell you how profitable a particular merchant is to all affiliates in the network on average. That is extremely important because there are merchants out there that scam affiliates. They get you to sign up and send your traffic, but somehow you never make a sale. If you use the above two networks, you can eliminate 99% of that kind of merchant. If they try to do that, the network statistics will show it and they won't get any new affiliates. So, use the above two networks.

This article will focus on Commission Junction (CJ for short). CJ is one of the two largest affiliate networks in existence. The other network which may or may not be larger at the time you read this is LinkShare. I don't recommend LinkShare when you are getting started because there are no network-wide statistics. You simply can't tell how well a merchant pays until you have first invested some of your hard-earned traffic. You may want to check them out at a later time though. I still get $25-$300 checks from various LinkShare merchants every week.

To signup at CJ (which is free) click on this link and follow the directions:

https://signup.cj.com/member/publisherSignUp.do 

1. Click on "Solutions" up top.

2. Click on "application" under "Publisher Solutions" on the left.

3. Follow the rest of the directions to get our free CJ publisher account.

Once you have your CJ account, you can login here:

http://www.cj.com 

To find advertisers in your topic area do this:

1. Click "Get Links"

2. In the search box, enter the main topic of your site.

3. You will receive a list of merchants. They are ordered by the EPC (amount they pay on average per 100 clicks/visitors). You can see their 3 month average and their 7 day average.

4. Click the check box next to each merchant that you think would fit well with your site. Then click the "Apply to Program" button. I recommend avoiding merchants who have an EPC lower than $5.00.

5. Some merchants manually approve applications; others approve everyone. Your list will now show which merchants have already approved you. For each of those, click the "View Links" button.

6. It will show you all of the acceptable advertising methods for that advertiser. Some are banners (graphics), some are text. Ignore the banners. Scroll down until you see the first text link. Click the "Get HTML" link to the far right of the first text link you find for this advertiser.

7. Select the code in the box near the middle of the popup window you get. Right click on it after you have selected it and choose "Copy".

8. Use FrontPage (or DreamWeaver) to open each page in your resource directory that matches the link on CJ. Switch to HTML view in Front Page and go down to the first link on the page. Paste the CJ code right above it. Now go back to regular view in Front Page and see if the link looks OK and was pasted into the right area. You can also format it to look more like the other links on the page.

9. Repeat this for each advertiser. You want as many links as you can scattered throughout your resource directory.

10. Upload your site with the new CJ links.

That's it. Now you can sit back and relax. You can check on sales at any time at CJ, but there is no need to ship any products or do anything else. The merchant handles everything and pays CJ who then pays you monthly. I highly recommend this as an initial way to start making money with your content website.

About the Author: The author, James D. Brausch, is the coach and webmaster of QuitThatJob.com, a site dedicated to providing step-by-step instructions to start your own profitable Internet business and Quit That Job! For more information, please visit: http://www.quitthatjob.com/ 

Article Courtesy of Winkingpig Webmaster Resources