Participate in Affiliate Programs

In an affiliate program, you agree to run an ad, usually a
small banner ad, on your site that links back to the
sponsor’s site. The ad will contain numbers or words in the
link that will enable the sponsor’s site to recognize anyone
that clicks through the ad as a visitor referred by your site.
If that visitor buys anything from that site once they click
through, you receive a commission off that sale.
Finding affiliate programs are easy to do. Look for sites that
offer products or services that compliment yours, but don’t
compete. Check their site for affiliate programs. Don’t sign
up for just any affiliate program, however. Again, you want
to make sure the site already gets plenty of traffic, that they
have a good reputation, and whatever product or service
they’re offering goes with your site.
Google AdSense is very discriminating about having other
ads appear on the same page as theirs. Affiliate ads which
contain graphics and not text are usually okay, but be sure
to read your Google TOS thoroughly so that you are not in
violation.

Create Affiliate Programs


You can’t beat someone placing your ad on his or her site
free, can you? But how do you do that? If you’re selling a
product or service, you can do this by creating your own
affiliate program. It works the same way as participating in
someone else’s, but this time, you offer a commission to
sites whose visitors click through your ad, then buy
something.
To do this, you’re going to need to set up an organized
system to track your click through rate and sales, set
commission rates that you can afford and are willing to pay,
and a system to pay your affiliates. It will take thought and
a lot of time to get this rolling, but getting affiliates can be
rather easy and you can be less picky than if you were
buying ad space on their sites.
You can find your affiliates by simply searching for sites that
you think would be ideal. Send them an e-mail, introduce
them to you and your site, instruct them on what you’re
offering, and how they can sign up.
Target higher ranked sites at first because those sites are
more likely to bring you sales. In addition, those sites will
be the first to be able to offer testimonials about your
affiliate program. That will draw in more affiliates.
Again, just make sure you can afford to pay what you say
you will. The worst thing you can do is make your affiliates
mad, or, worse, put yourself out of business.

Web Rings

Web rings are simply common sites that link together using
a service such as http://www.ringsurf.com/. You display an
ad at the bottom of your index page stating that you are a
member of the ring. Visitors can click through other ring
member sites and see sites that are related to yours.

Depending on the size of the ring, this can bring you an
extra few hundred unique visitors a day.
Beware of joining too many rings because it makes
your page look tacky. Do your homework and find the
best ring you can with the largest number of members. You
can even contact some of the ring members and ask them
how much traffic it brings them. If you’re selective and do
the research, a web ring can work well for your site.

One Way Links

One-way links are links to your site placed on other sites,
without you having to return the favor by placing a link to
their site on yours (reciprocal links). These are harder to
get than reciprocal links. The more legitimate links you
have back to your site, the higher you’re going to rank in the
search engines and the more traffic you’re going to receive.
You do not want to contact any site that could be in
competition with yours at all. Instead, you want to target
sites whose visitors would also be interested in what you
offer. For example, you own a gift basket site. That’s all
you do. You want to place one-way links on other sites.
Don’t target sites that sell the products you put in your gift
baskets or sites that sell different types of gift baskets than
you. Look for sites that sell other gift ideas, like online
flower shops or singing telegram sites.
These sites in no way compete with yours, but you can offer
their visitors other interesting options. Approach the site
owner or Webmaster with that in mind. Tell them how
placing a link to your site would benefit them and their
customers. “Your customers may want to send a gift along
with flowers, and would appreciate that you made their
search easier for them.” You may even want to offer them
a discount on your site or a free sample of your products.

When looking for sites, notice the ones that have a section
for recommended sites. Those are usually one-way links,
and those sites will probably be willing to add yours to the
list if you can present them with a reason why they should
recommend your site to their visitors.