Do Affiliate Websites Really Work?

"I am starting to research how to generate a monthly income by creating affiliate websites. Is it really true that people can make hundreds or even a thousand or more dollars a month by creating affiliate websites alone?" -- Skip Goforth

Yes, it is quite possible to earn this kind of money through affiliate promotions. I am able to and I know a number of others who have succeeded. It is now possible to monetize many affiliate sites through the use of Google AdSense ads in addition to affiliate links.

Be aware, however, that for every two people making money with an affiliate website, about 98 people are making nothing because they haven't done the research and haven't taken the time to develop content and build traffic to their websites. Make no mistake, this is hard work, and you have to work smart to succeed. You won't get rich this way, but you can earn a nice living if you're a hard worker and persistent in the right niche.

One of the important keys is to research niches first to find areas that are both unfilled or partially filled and can be monetized. Your site needs to center around themes for which there are products or services that will generate large enough affiliate commissions to create a profit. Don't skimp on the research phase.

Dr. Ken Evoy

The first time you build an affiliate site, I strongly recommend that you use Ken Evoy's Site Build It! (http://sales.sitesell.com/buildit). While it is possible to do this on your own, the advantage of Site Build It! is that if you carefully follow Ken's instructions, I believe that your chances of at least modest success are very good. I don't say that lightly.

SBI includes what you need to build and market a website: an Action Guide: Make Your Content PRE Sell (601 pages), hosting for the website, site-building templates and wizards, and a domain name. Marketing tools help you research the potential of various site themes and keywords, find reciprocal linking partners, optimize your webpages for search engines, manage keyword buys on Overture, send out your newsletter, etc. It is possible to assemble such tools separately, but having them packaged with detailed instructions that aren't just a bunch of hyped-up baloney makes the difference (and is substantially less expensive). Note: SBI does have limits. For example, you can't host a database-driven site on this platform.

There are no guarantees that you'll build a successful business with SBI (though there is a 30-day money back guarantee). I'm sure lots of people skip Ken's instructions and produce a site that makes no money at all. But the instructions are sound and if followed, will, in my opinion, lead you to an actual revenue-producing online business. Many kinds small businesses have built successful sites with SBI. Moreover, many have achieved a significant Alexa traffic ranking. The list price for SBI is $495 for the first year, but with rebates and bonuses it boils down to $395 for the first 15 months or $249 for the first 8 months. Renewals are $299 per year.

To sum it up, yes it is possible to earn money with an affiliate site if you are shrewd in selecting the theme of your site, are willing to do the difficult work of building valuable content for your site, and stick with it until you have built the necessary search engine traffic.