General Affiliate Program Signup Setup
How to create affiliate link code for text links and banners
The procedure for setting up a standard affiliate programs like commission junction, linkshare, doubleclick performics, clickbank, or paydotcom, are basically all the same. Especially commission junction, linkshare, and performics. These 3 affiliate programs have the same website structure for you to build your affiliate links or banners. The signup procedure for all affiliate programs are about the same as well. Each affiliate program will ask for your basic information, name, address, company name (if you signed up for an EIN/FEIN), your TIN (SSN, EIN, FEIN), and website url (domain name, website address, site url, etc.). Now after this some of them will ask for some addition information such as your marketing methods (email, search engine, website, etc.).
Now that you have the basic idea of each of these affiliate programs, I will now guide you on how to signup and build affiliate links and banners for these affiliate programs.
The first affiliate program website I will cover is linkshare affiliate program, followed by commission junction affiliate program, doubleclick performics (connectcommerce), clickbank, and paydotcom. Below is a list of each step to signup and create affiliate links for these affiliate programs, although this sounds like common sense to most of you, there are many people I see ask questions when signing up for these affiliate programs and how to use them, so I found it to be helpful if I walk you through the process, so you can have confidense when setting up your affiliate links and affiliate banners.
Linkshare affiliate signup application - Open Firefox to linkshare.com and click on "Publishers" now on this next webpage we want to click on "Join now (100% free)". Fill out the affiliate application form, this first section will ask you for your company information, you will enter your company's information when you are signing up as a individual using your SSN, or a company using an EIN, which most of you will probably be using a free EIN from the IRS or an EIN using an LLC package. Agree to their terms and then enter the letters/numbers that are shown in the image, this is used to prevent computer programs signing up for multiple accounts as they can not see the letters/numbers in this image. The next section is entering your website information, website name is your title this is not your .com name, this is just your title "How to start an online affiliate company", url: this will be your domain name that you purchased (your .com name), business model will most likely be content/niche, select 5,000-50,000 for both of these for visitors, give a description of what your website is about, what it's for. The next few things I'm sure you can figure out, now on payment threshold this is the amount that your checks have to reach before they send them to you. This never worked, it will say wrong format, just leave it blank. Click continue, congratulations you now have a linkshare affiliate account! Linkshare will email you a confirmation email, be sure to read this email as there is a link in it to confirm your account and activate it.
Linkshare affiliate links and affiliate banners:
- Open up Firefox webbrowser to linkshare.com and click "Login" on the top right area.
- Login with your username and password you created and click on "Programs". This section is where you can go through and apply to all of the affiliate advertiser companies like CompUSA, Things Remembered, Zales Jewelry, etc.
- Navigate through the categories to find the affiliate advertisers you want to promote and place a checkmark in the box to agree to their terms and the box to apply. Then you can click apply. Now some affiliate advertiser companies will accept you right away and you can start promoting them using their affiliate links and banners on your website. Some affiliate advertisers will apply manually, meaning they will look at your website and see if they want you promoting their company from your website. Some affiliate advertiser companies will deny you, it's no big deal, you can reapply to them, plus any decent affiliate company will approve anyone, because you place their links on your website and you have a crappy website, you won't send any sales, therefor they don't pay you.
- Now that you are approved by an affiliate company we need to generate affiliate link code and affiliate banner code.
- Login to linkshare.com and after you get logged in click on "Links". Now you will see a list of all the affiliate advertisers that have alreayd accepted you.
- Now if you hold your mouse over the affiliate advertiser or click on their name, it will open up a list of the types of promotion tools they offer, products (link to certain product), banners, text links, auto rotating, etc. Click on whichever one you want to use.
- Now after you chose which type of affiliate link you would like to use, not it will ask for the specifics, if you chose product ads, you now have to search and select a product, if you chose banner or image affiliate links you now have to find which one you want to use. Now when you see which link you want to use, click "Get Link" on the right hand side. Here you will have a few options to select from depending on which affiliate ad type you chose. But reguardless of which link type you chose you will always have an option here to "Open Link in New Window", make sure this option is selected. This way when someone clicks on your link from your website it will open it in a new window so your website still stays open when they close the affiliates website.
- Now below these options you will see the code that you have to copy and paste onto your website. Right click in this box, click "Select All", right click again and click "Copy", now go to your website in the appropriate place and right click and go to "Paste". So now you have your affiliate link code, go to the appropriate section on my site to learn where to paste this code, if your are using WordPress blog, go to that section and read.
Commission junction affiliate signup application - Commission junction's signup procedure is just about the same. Open firefox webbrowser to cj.com and then hold your mouse over top of "Publishers" on the top left and then click "Application" or if you click on "Publisher" in the middle of the page you will have to scroll to the very bottom and click "Apply for a Commission Junction publisher account". I think the 3 questions on this first page you can handle. Now in the first box on this page is their terms, scroll to the bottom of the box and click "accept". Next thing it will ask that some people get confused on is promotional methods. You will probably select each one of these except Software. Some people always ask me about this next question, I don't know if they are not right in the head, or if they just read into it too much, the next thing is asking if you are going to donate any money you make to a charity, it's right there in black and white in almost those exact words, and then enter yor contact information. Next section will ask about payment options, this is another thing people ask me, NO it don't matter which one you pick, it's simple, do you want them to mail you a check when you make money, or do you want them to automatically deposit your money into your account, it's not going to make you mor emoney one way or another, don't make things more complicated than they are! Enter their image verification, then click "accept terms". You are done, commission junction will send you a confirmation email as well and in this email it will have your password, which commission junction generates randomly for you.
Commission junction affiliate links and affiliate banners: Almost same exact process, all of these general affiliate programs have about the same user interface.
- Open firefox webbroswer to cj.com and on the top right enter your email address and password that commission junction sent you, and click "Go".
- Now that you are logged in click on "Get Links" at the top, this is where you will go though and select the affiliate companies that you want to promote. Here you place a checkmark next to each affiliate program you want to promote and then click on "Apply to Program". Same rules apply here, some may approve you instantly, some will approve you manually.
- After you have been approved by the affiliate companies, you can come back in here and get your affiliate link code. Now when you login, you will see on the first page at the bottom a section called "My Advertisers" with a drop down box with all your affiliate companies listed in it that have approved you. Select the affiliate company and click "Go!". A popup window will open up with all the details for this company, how much they pay how long their tracking lasts (which they call "Action Referral Period"), here on the top right you will see a list of all the types of affiliate links they offer, banners, products, text, promotional, etc. Click on the type of affiliate ad you want to use.
- Now just like linkshare this will ask you more specific type of affiliate link, if you chose product, you now select your product, if you selected banner, you now select which banner you want to use to promote. Now with commission junction on the right hand side you can click "Get JavaScript" or "Get HTML", I usually use HTML as I can edit it easier if I want to customize this ad. Like if it makes "click here to buy laptops" clickable, and I want it to say just "buy laptops" clickable or just "laptops" I can change this, with JavaScript it is usually not very customizable. Also HTML almost integrates easily with any website builder or blog, where JavaScript is prohibited on many free blogs and article submission sites.
- After you click "Get HTML" you will get a few options now, make sure you select "open link in new window" and is you want to use a SID you can. An SID is a tracking code you can place on your links so you know which one they clicked on you can. After changing any of these settings click "Update Link Code".
- Your affiliate link code is not ready to be copied and pasted onto your website or blog. In the box with the code right click and then click "Select All", right click again and select "Copy", then go to your website and right click and "Paste" in the appropriate area. Yes I know there is a button to click "highlight and copy code" these types of buttons do not work in every webbrowser so that is why list out the manual steps.
As you see all of these affiliate program signups and using the links are almost the exact same. I will be adding the rest of the general affiliate programs at a later time as I think if you read through the ones here you can figure out the rest, if you have any questions, ask on my Internet Business Help Forum. I will cover setting up amazon and setting up Google AdSense on another page as they have many options and tools to use.
Internet Marketing for Small Businesses
FREE internet marketing guide to start an internet business
