Unless you’re the type of person who has no intention of making any money from your blog or website (which I’m sure are NONE of us!), we’re constantly looking for new products to make to sell or new patterns to put online as well as new items to add to our craft fair inventory.
Most of the time we’re so busy looking for “physical” things to make / sell that we overlook the items that could generate quite a bit of passive or residual income. By working up your own system of selling other peoples’ products using affiliate programs, you could be adding large amounts of money to your profit stream.
The best thing about doing various approaches to selling other peoples’ products by using affiliate programs is that you only have to do the work (sign up to be an affiliate) ONE time, then let your banner ads, etc generate the income for you.
Besides using banner ads on the sidebar of your blog or website, here are a couple other ideas on how to use those affiliate links to make money.
** If you do sewing machine repair and the machine you’re working on has just about seen the end of its life, you could have a little flyer handy to attach to the customer’s bill giving them an online resource for finding a new sewing machine (AllBrands is a great resource for finding new sewing machines, sergers, embroidery machines, etc)
** If you are into teaching coupon classes (and these are becomming more popular as the economy continues to slide), you should seriously consider signing up for the coupon clutch affiliate program (http:/CouponClutch.com/idevaffiliate/), then have a coupon clutch flyer made up with your own special coupon code that you can hand out to all the participants of your coupon classes. This is a definite win/win situation – your class members can get a discount on the coupon clutch of their choice to hold all those coupons you’re teaching about, and YOU get the commission for each one that is sold.
** If you’re into doing sewing classes, then you already know that all of your students will be looking for fabric for the various projects you’re working on, so the best type of flyer for these people will be one where you recommend JoAnn’s or Fabric.com as great resources for buying their fabrics. These are especially important online fabric resources for you to get affiliated with if you have very few or no fabric stores in your own area.
** Once you are affiliated with several programs, and if you are in the position to do regular posts on a blog, it would be to your advantage to write something about an item or two from that program that would lead people to check out the items that the other person has for sale (and that YOU could be making a commission on the sales). The very best example I can give you on this is what Christie at WildForWags did about an affiliate product that she liked so much she wanted to tell the world about it. Or, if a program you’re affiliated with has a super great deal, such as the one at ShopperStrategy, don’t forget to pass that along to your readers as well. Get creative and start making extra money with other peoples’ products!
By geting creative with using those affiliate programs you have the ability to increase your residual or “passive” income tremendously. How would an affiliate program commission check of $30 – $80+ per month help YOUR budget? Some blog owners get several hundred dollars and more per month with the use of affiliate marketing. Of course, like everything else, you probably won’t get that kind of check the very first month you sign up as an affiliate in order to use other peoples’ products to make extra money, but every dollar adds up faster than you realize.
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