I was thinking about what was the absolute BEST tip I could give you to help you guys get your sites off the ground and profitable. This is what I came up with:

When I create a new website, looking at affiliate programs is part of my niche selection process.

There are three absolutely important things that I look for when signing up for affiliate programs. With enough creativity, you can fit any one (or all) of these strategies into your niche website. 

Three Methods I Use To Turn Big Profits From My Websites

1) High Ticket Items With Large Commissions

I see a lot of beginners sell $5 or $10 items with less than 5% commissions. This is not the way to go. It can provide you with content for your website, but it is very hard to make good money selling stuff like that unless the items are extremely popular.

Look for items that are at least $20-50 per sale, with 10% or higher commissions. This is not unreasonable, and in fact, some places offer 50% commissions or more. Amazon pays just 4% to start, but once you reach higher volumes, they do pay up to 10%, so I think Amazon can be a good affiliate program for anyone.

If you sell 1 x $100 item with a 10% commission, that's $10. Depending on how your conversions are, this basically means you need less traffic to make good money.

But sell 10 x $10 items with a 5% commission, and you've only made $5. You need to sell stuff to 20 times more people than the first example! That could mean you need 20 times the traffic to do it!

There will always be high ticket items in any niche, you just have to find them. You may have a nutritional supplement website and think, “My favorite supplements are only $5 a bottle. What now?!”. Do some more research! Find out where the expensive supplements are. Or branch off into related topics like body fat scales ($50-$150) or home gym equipment ($1,000+). Think outside the box.

• Big list of high ticket items
• Bit list of high paying programs

2) Recurring Commissions

Recurring commissions saved my business more than once. My online business has been a learning experience, and I have made several huge mistakes along the way. Some mistakes crashed my sites or permanently destroyed my rankings. 🙁

But through it all, I was still making money. That's because even when my sites weren't working, I was still making sales.

See which products or services in your niche pay you each time a person resubscribes. Even small commissions build up over time.

I sell some software which is only costs $8, and I only make 12% commissions. I make less than $1 per sale! But I sell 2-3 per day, and after 2 years promoting this site, I now receive about $700 in recurring commissions, plus the new signups make it over $1000 per month.

Side Note: This is one reason you may want to consider building an email list at some point. Having your customers' email address and being able to market related products to them in the future is very powerful for making multiple sales from one person. It's just something to keep in mind for the future.

• Big list of recurring programs

3) Compare And Contrast

Find similar products and compare them. Just be honest, objective, and give your opinion on which one you think is better. The key is though, have affiliate links for BOTH products, even if you don't recommend one.

Not everyone will listen to your advice, or another product may be better for them. You can still make money from products you don't recommend!

Comparison chart plugins and review plugins are great ways to display this information.

NEW! 8 article formats to make money online

Information Overload!

Welcome to the information overload zone! I know it's a bad idea to just throw tons of information at you, but bookmark this page and come back to is as you have time and feel you can handle it. There are so many awesome resources on WA, that they can be hard to find, and hard to know which ones are worth your time. Below are my favorites, and most relevant to making money.

Making Money From Your WordPress Blog: This is one of the most popular training's on WA just because it's straightforward and lays out some simple strategies for making money from your blog. There are so many ways to make money online, that you could do a whole series of trainings on each of these individual strategies.

=> 13 Ways To Make Money With A WordPress Website

Making Money With Adsense: As much as I hate Adsense and think it's not worth your time to put ads on your blog, some people love it. If you want to do a blog or website without a lot of keyword research, and don't really want to mess with affiliate marketing or marketing in general, Google Adsense could be a way to make some extra money each month while you mess around with your site.

=> How To Make Money Without Selling Anything

=> Which Display Ad Networks Have Made Me The Most Money

Finding Great Affiliate Programs: Not all affiliate programs are create equal! The live video course is targeted towards people promote Wealthy Affiliate, but you can use many of the same principles to find good affiliate programs for your own niche. The post from my blog repeats some of the same information from above, but these concepts are so important to my and my marketing campaigns that they're worth repeating.

Webinar: Finding Awesome Affiliate Programs

Webinar: Profiting With Private Affiliate Programs

Final Thoughts

There's so much information here, you can't consume it all in one day. My suggestion is to just read this page, then slowly work your way through the links as you have time. Keep working on your WA training diligently.

If you focus on creating quality content for your readers, then the money will follow!