--------------- Now playing: Respect by Aretha Franklin ---------------
Commission Junction is a popular affiliate network for affiliate marketers. With a huge variety of participating merchants, you can usually find something there to promote regardless of your niche.
Here's how to add a product from Commission Junction to your site (instructions apply to wordpress.org; adjust as necessary). This tutorial assumes you already have an account at CJ and have established a relationship with at least one merchant, meaning you have applied to their affiliate program and been accepted.
1. Go to cj.com and sign in to your account.
2. Click on "Get Links By Relationship." You will see a list of all the merchants you are working with.
3. Choose an advertiser and click on "View Products."
4. Type in a keyword or two and click "Find" in order to find products that fit your niche. You can check out the links that appear to find out more about each product and its earning potential.
5. When you've decided which one to promote, click on "Get HTML."
6. In the window that pops up, select the options you want such as whether a click should open a new browser window for your customer and whether to hide the tracking code or encrypt the link. If you've chosen any of these options, click on "Update Link Code."
7. Copy the code that corresponds to the link you want. Some are plain text, some are just an image, and some have both.
8. Go to your WordPress dashboard to the post you're working on. Make sure you're in the HTML tab and paste the code in the desired spot.
9. Resize the photo if necessary, either by dragging one of the corner handles or by clicking on the photo and editing it by changing the pixel sizes under Advanced Settings. (If you change the width, make sure to change the height by the same percentage.)
10. "Update" or "Publish" your post, and you're done!
Customizing the affiliate link
If you're using a photo link and you want to make the text wrap around the photo neatly, insert this right before the HTML code you just pasted in:
<p style="float: left; width: 210px;">
Make the width about 10 pixels wider than the picture. Of course you can use float right if you prefer.
If you chose an affiliate link that consisted of a photo only, it helps to also change the text next to it to make it clear that the accompanying photo is a link to the product, not just a static image.
For instance, you could add something like: “Get your own [item name] like the one pictured here from [merchant name]." Then link that text to the product as well by isolating the URL from the code CJ gave you and making a link like you normally would in a post. That gives customers another chance to click through, which is what you want. Of course, if you're going to add your own text anyway, it might make sense to use the CJ code that already includes text and just tweak it as desired.
It may seem a little complicated at first, but once you've added a few different product links, you'll start to understand the concept and will find it gets much easier. Whenever you write about something, think about what products would help your reader accomplish what you’ve told them in that article. Not that you need to or even should add affiliate links to every article, but do whatever feels like the right amount to you for your particular site, using restraint but at the same time taking advantage of every reasonable opportunity. Try to blend the ads into the articles by wrapping the text around them as I’ve shown – that way they don’t interrupt the flow but are still noticeable.
I LOVE my “job.” Affiliate marketing takes work, but it doesn’t feel like work.
Comments on this entry are closed.