You know your niche inside and out, don't you? If not, go back to the drawing board and learn it!

To make thousands of dollars every month in passive income from your blog, your information must be top notch, and for that you have to be an authority on your topic. It's that simple.

OK, so now that you have an idea about what types of products MIGHT be interesting to your nice, you set out to find the best performing products. No, not just any products, you want to find the ones that are performing well for others, and you start there. There's no need to reinvent the wheel.

ClickBank tips and tricks - how to start making money today

ClickBank is a huge marketplace for selling digital products. And it has the easiest to use affiliate program out there. You literally just sign up, search for products to promote by keyword, and get the code to promote them on your site.

You can also see how much you’ll get for every sale, and what percentage of the sale amount that is. Hint - - don’t look for the larger total price, but rather the program that offers you the highest percentage of each sale.

The downside: ClickBank has the worst stats tracking of any affiliate network out there. They don't show you how many clicks you've sent to a product, which can be really frustrating. They only tell you when you've made a sale, and how much you made. This approach also doesn't allow for testing to make sure your links are good. But alas, it's basically a must for any serious affiliate marketer. So go sign up for ClickBank and find some products to promote.

Commission Junction

Comission Junction is another top affiliate network. It provides great stats for clicks sent, and also gives you great comparative numbers on how much others are really earning for sales across all merchants.

But their products are generally not as juicy as those on ClickBank. Nevertheless, sign up for Comission Junction as well to round out your list of affiliate products, and find yourself some well converting products to try out.

Other affiliate marketing networks and programs

There are some other affiliate networks out there that are worth paying attention to, but it’s very important to not spread yourself too thin. Do your research and find the programs you’ll be focusing on, and go from there.

SharePayNow vs. Clickbank

Another affiliate network similar to ClickBank that’s starting to gain some ground is SharePayNow.

This network is very similar to ClickBank, but unlike ClickBank, it DOES show you how many clicks you’ve sent to a campaign - which is always nice. However, unlike ClickBank, it doesn’t show you which programs in their marketplace are converting and how well. But SharePayNow is definitely worth checking out when you’re choosing products to promote on your site.

AzoogleAds vs. LinkShare - alternate affiliate networks

If you’re looking for some banner ads to check out, you’ll need to find an affiliate program that provides those. AzoogleAds and LinkShare are both large affiliate networks that are worth checking out.

But there’s a big difference, and having dealt with both we’ll be avoiding LinkShare in the future. LinkShare feels like a large, sluggish company, while AzoogleAds is young and on the ball. The AzoogleAds support is great, and you get your own very responsive dedicated account manager that’s actually eager to work with you and help you find well converting campaigns for your site. Wow, imagine that.

Here’s a major difference though - AzoogleAds tends to offer well paying promotions for affiliates, which pay out significantly better than their counterparts on LinkShare.

Check out AzoogleAds and see which of their promotions could work for you.

The Amazon affiliate program

And of course, the most popular affiliate program of all time, the Amazon affiliate program. For some truly bizarre reason, the Amazon affiliate program is one of the most popular and successful affiliate programs in the history of Internet marketing.

Maybe it's because it's downright easy to set up Amazon affiliate links for your site, and start making a little money. More likely, it's because we all BUY books and other products from Amazon regularly, so we're comfortable with it. And we know that others buy from Amazon as well.

Here's the catch though. Amazon pays you roughly 5% of the revenues you generate for them. That is lower than just about ANY website and blog monetization scheme out there. While it is another monetization option, there are just too many other better options with much higher payouts.

Knowing this, should you still sign up for the Amazon affiliate program?

Yes, you should definitely still sign up for this program. You will eventually either refer to or actually review various books on your website. These books will likely not have direct affiliate options, so the only way to monetize these referrals will be through a quick link to the Amazon product page.

Also, that Amazon affiliate link is a great way to provide your reader more information on the book you're talking about, and make it easy for your readers to purchase the book.

Amazon also has a really neat feature for affiliates, which creates a dynamic preview of the book when your readers hover their mouse cursor over the book link on your site. All it takes is a tiny JavaScript snippet you'll get from Amazon.

For an example of the Amazon product preview pop-up, check out this post on AskDanAndJennifer.com answering a reader question about steamy date night DVDs - hover over the DVD titles.

So go ahead and sign up to the Amazon affiliate program as well, but don't spend a lot of time putting up their banners and other sales tools. Instead, us this as a laser focused way to monetize reviews and references to popular books that you include in your articles. And suddenly you have ONE MORE revenue source paying you every month.

The eBay affiliate program and AuctionAds

Yeah, the whole "make money with eBay" thing was and still is a great opportunity for some, but it's become more of a fad. Starting a blog is a solid way to make long term income - just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. Imagine that!

Unlike Amazon, eBay shows some serious loving for it's affiliates. In fact, in June 2007, eBay nearly doubled it�s affiliate payout amounts. That's some serious affiliate loving.

eBay pays you both a flat reward for each referral you send them (a customer who creates an eBay account and eventually buys something) and also a percentage of the sales generated from the referrals you send them. Now that's pretty cool.

What's the best way to add eBay listings to your site and make money?

Until recently, it's been a challenge to add eBay listings to your site in a visually appealing way, so as to really get your visitors engaged. But AuctionAds makes it very easy to do this, with their easy to customize widgets. You can customize the ad unit on their site, copy the little code snippet, and add it to your site. Done - you've got eBay auction ads.

Can you make more money with eBay by using AuctionAds?

YES! The eBay affiliate program is tiered to pay you a lot more money as a high traffic affiliate. So if you have a lot of sales and referrals every month, you make much more PER REFERRAL than someone with just a few sales / referrals per month.

By joining AuctionAds, your commissions are based on the entire AuctionAds member base, not just your own sales. So each referral and sale you generate are compensated as a very high traffic affiliate. Again, this is working smarter, not harder. Sign up for AuctionAds to add eBay auctions to your site - and make money as a high traffic eBay affiliate.