So, why not start making some recommendations that will earn you some cash?

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2 Welcome To Our Affiliate Program! Thank you for your interest in becoming an affiliate with The Selling Family! We love our affiliates and look forward to working with you to help you earn some passive income! If you ever need any help with promotion or have something special in mind, feel free to reach out to us at Affiliate Training What better way to earn some cash than by simply sharing, with others in your circle of influence, a product, service, podcast, blog post (and more) that you love? In the offline world it s done all the time. Only difference? You re not usually getting paid for your recommendation. Think about it: you re out walking the dog and a neighbor (that recently moved in) stops you to ask if you have a recommendation for a good place to have dinner. Don t you just automatically tell them about your favorite mom and pop owned diner that serves the best home cooked comfort foods? Or what about when someone asks on Facebook if anyone has seen the new action packed thriller movie that hit theaters the other day? It s normal to share your thoughts about it (and others too). And you don t get anything in return for sharing the recommendation/non-recommendation. So, why not start making some recommendations that will earn you some cash? If you re new to affiliate marketing and aren t sure how to find your affiliate link, how to use it and more, that s what this guide is going to show you. It ll also cover how to share your affiliate link via social media as well as adding images to a blog post and your website sidebar. The first thing you ll need to do is go to our member center ( and login. 2

3 If you ve bought a product in the past or signed up as an affiliate already, you ll have a username and password to login. If you don t remember your password you can request a new one by entering your address in the box on the right. If you are not in our system at all, you can sign up as an affiliate here: Once you log in to your account you will see the screen below. If you are not a member of our affiliate program yet, you will need to click "Advertise our website to your friends and earn money" to sign-up. If you have signed up for our affiliate program already, you should see a screen that looks like the screenshot below. 3

4 Before you start making any affiliate promotions, it s important to make sure that you have updated your affiliate commission payout information: Choose PayPal and then enter your PayPal address and then click save. (Note: if you use a different for PayPal than your main address, make sure you enter the correct one here!) Now, you re ready to find your affiliate link. Under Affiliate Info on the navigation bar choose Get affiliate banners and links. 4

5 The link will take you to your affiliate information page. Below the affiliate program guidelines, you will find your (1) your general affiliate link and (2) some codes for our products (The Selling Family in this example). Note: in this example, the actual affiliate ID has been blurred out. When you look at it, you ll see your affiliate ID already listed (it is also you username when you login to our members area). 5

6 Let s take a look at these more in depth. 1. Your General Affiliate Link Let s say you don t want to recommend something specific (like a product, service, etc) but just want to make a general reference. This is the link you would use to do that. It ll take people to our home page. 2. Category Options This is where you can choose the category of links you are looking for. We have the links separated in 3 categories 6

7 1. Non-product specific links these will let you direct people to specific pages of our website, without actually pointing to a specific product. These are good for getting cookies to the site from people who may be interested in selling on Amazon % commission products these are our courses that offer a 40% commission to the affiliate % commission products these are our courses that offer a 50% commission to the affiliate. Using Links Once you have decided on a category, you will click on the category title and then see the available links and banners that are available for the category. 7

8 Each choice will have the title (the product that you want to recommend), the URL it points to and the source code. This is where you ll find the code you need to recommend people to our website while adding a tracking cookie. In the screenshot below, you see what s known as a product ID after your affiliate ID (again you ll see your actual affiliate ID, not XXXX s). This code is used to direct people to a specific page (in the screenshot example below it s for Amazon Boot Camp). Using Graphics Let s say you want to use a graphic to promote something instead of just a plain text link. In the screenshot below, you ll see that there is a graphic added in the affiliate center that can be used to promote one of our products (the example below is for the Amazon Boot Camp, again you ll see your actual affiliate ID, not XXXX s) 8

9 Let s look at a few ways to use the graphic on your website: In the sidebar If you want to promote something in the sidebar of your website, it s quick and easy to do so. All you have to do is grab that code that says source code copy/paste into your website and put it into a text widget. Below are the instructions with a screenshot to show you how to do this. 1. Login to your WordPress website dashboard 2. On the left choose Appearance ==> Widgets ==> Default Sidebar ==> Text (you may need to drag a text widget into the default sidebar area first) If you wish to give the text area a title you can do so. If not, just leave it blank. For this example I have named it "DEMO". Once you have a title added (or not), simply paste in the code to the text area as seen below and then click SAVE (don t forget to save it or it won t show up in the sidebar of you website. 9

10 Now when you go and look at your website you will see the graphic in the sidebar like this: In a blog post This will be a little bit different than the example above. Now instead of copying/pasting the code you will need to download the image to your website first by right clicking on the image and choosing save image as and choosing where to save it (desktop, downloads, etc.). Once you have it saved to your computer you will insert the image into the blog post and then add your affiliate link to that. Below are the instructions with a screenshot to show you how to do this. 1. Login to your WordPress website 2. Create your post ==> choose add media, find the image where you saved it on your website and insert it 10

11 3. Now you need to add your affiliate link to the image you just inserted. Using the source code mentioned in the above example (adding the image to your website sidebar), you only need the actual link with your affiliate ID and the product ID (it s highlighted below), not the entire code that has the image source code. (Remember the XXX s will not be there, but your affiliate ID instead) <a href=" src=" " border=0 alt="250x250 Add" width="250" height="250"></a> 4. Once you have your affiliate link, click on the image so it s highlighted in your post and then click on the icon that looks like a pencil (shown below). A little window will pop up and that s where you will enter your affiliate link. Look for the dropdown menu beside "Link To", choose custom URL and paste your affiliate link below. That s it. The image is now set up with your affiliate link. 11

12 On Social Media You can always use the image to share on social media sites too. Just remember to include your affiliate link in the post! The problem with doing this is that your affiliate link is long and ugly. If you want to shorten it and make it pretty there s a free plug-in called Pretty Link. It s easy to install, use and create short pretty links. Pretty Link Plugin As mentioned above this is a free plugin that allows you to shorten and pretty up your affiliate links. First you ll need to install it. Below are the instructions with a screenshot to show you how to do this. 1. Login to your WordPress website 2. On the left hand side of the dashboard, click on add new under the Plugins section 3. In the search box type in Pretty Link and click on the search plugins box. A bunch of results will show up. You want the first option Pretty Link Lite. Choose the install now option. 12

13 4. The plugin has been installed but needs to be activated. Your screen should look like this screenshot below. Simply click on activate plugin now. After it has been activated it will now show up in the left hand side dashboard of your website like this: 5. You re now ready to create a pretty link for a product you want to promote. Click on Pretty Link in the dashboard and you ll see this: 13

14 6. Click on add a pretty link (yellow arrow in above screenshot) and this is where you ll enter the information to create your pretty link. It should look like this: There are three sections to pay attention to: target url pretty link title Target URL is where you will enter your affiliate link. For example lets use the The Selling Family link from above: (remember the XXX s will not be there, but your affiliate ID instead) Pretty Link is where you re going to enter what you choose to name the link. The is already there, you re just choosing the ending/naming of the link. For example let s name this one TSF Title is for your use only. No one will see this. It s just there so you can name the pretty link something that will help you remember what it is. For this example we ll name it The Selling Family because this is where it goes. 7. Check the box that says track hits on this link 8. Now click on the create button. Your pretty link has now been created and you ll see: 14

15 So now the pretty link for the The Selling Family Blog is This link is now shorter and prettier making it easier to share on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook versus the long generic affiliate link the system gives you. Affiliate Statistics Once you begin promoting affiliate products it s a good idea to keep an eye on your statistics. We re not talking anything complicated like Google Analytic statistics here, but instead the statistics you can find right in the member area. Back at the beginning of this report you were showed how to change your affiliate payout commission. Under that same Affiliate Info tab in the navigation bar you will see review your affiliate statistics : 15

16 Once you click review your affiliate statistics a page like this will show up: Each date shows you how many clicks were made on your affiliate links and your total commission earned for that day. Commission could be from links on previous days as well as purchases made from customers already linked to you in our system. You will also see a running total for every month in the report below the graph. Have Fun! Now that you know how our affiliate system works, the real fun begins! We look forward to sending you some commission checks very soon. 16