Hello all. Today we are going to chat about programs you can use to make money with Google Adwords. This article is predominantly meant for people who are affiliates (e.g. people without their own product to sell). I'm discussing this because this is the way I make money. I don't have any products I own and I don't worry about all the stuff that the owners of products worry about. Things like delivery, storage, collections etc. They are all up to the company or individual that owns the product. My only job is to direct eyeballs to the sales page.

There are a number of companies that can provide you with items or services to sell. I will only be talking about the three that I use, Commission Junction, Clickbank and Shareasale. I know there are others such as Linkshare or Shareresult, but for now I will concentrate on the three I use.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction or CJ, if you will, is a company that provides both physical and digital products that you can sell and make a commission from. They represent a wide variety of companies. Companies such as Discover Card, General Electric, eBay, Yahoo, Esurance... The list is very impressive by its size and who they represent in their clientele.

The majority of companies they represent will want to know a little more about you then just your email, nothing too personal. What they are looking for is some knowledge or content in their particular field. You can get acceptance without a website but the higher dollar items such as finance or insurance will not accept you as a publisher without proof you know what you are talking about or at least tell a good story about it. The denials are never personal as they won't give a reason for decline. They won't even answer emails about the situation. Not too worry though, there are lots of opportunities without any problem getting acceptance.

The planet is their business location. Their products and services hail from all over the world in lots of languages. They also deal in a five currencies. If you go to their Add Links page, it lists 30 categories with lots of subcategories. Thousands of companies and products are available. The search facility is second to none. Type in a product and it will give you all the companies that sell that product. You can also type in a specific vendor to see if they are on the list.

One of the advantages that CJ has over the other services available is their creatives. Their creatives for each company include banners, text links, keyword lists, actual content and more. They have creatives for individual products, groups of products, sales, hot products and lots of promotion links. This is by far the most creatives you will find with a company such as this.

Getting into CJ as a member is easy. A few questions regarding name, address, website, newsletters, payment preferences and a little about how you intend to do business are all you need. If you are applying as an affiliate for other companies, CJ refers to you as a publisher. If you are applying as a vendor, then you are known as the advertiser.

Clickbank

Clickbank is a company that allows you to sell only products that can be delivered over the internet. Products such as music, data, ebooks etc. are all there. There are over 10,000 products you can sell.

I have worked with Clickbank for a number of years now. The reason I use them is primarily their commission rates which can be up to 75% of the selling program. They have programs that will pay you 100 dollars for a sale. Hook into a few of those deals a day and easy street here we come.

One of the disadvantages of Clickbank is their lack of creatives with virtually none for any of the vendors. One of the advantages of the program is that you can't get turned down from vendors, once you are a member of Clickbank. The process of representing a product or company is very easy and results in just a web address that you insert your username into. That's it, no muss, no fuss. Just push as many eyeballs as possible to that address. Clickbank knows who made the sale by the username in the web address.

Clickbank has wonderful reporting functions with all the details of the sale available to the publisher, (you), right down to the email address of the person who purchased it. The sales are hot off the press and in the system the moment they happen.

Another reason I use them is the availability of recurring billing for items that have monthly fees. These are sweet. Automatic monthly revenue with no associated added work on your part. Get enough of them and they will keep you in the style you wish to be in.

Shareasale

Shareasale is relatively new company in the field. Being in business since 2000, it has amassed over 2,300 vendors to deal with. They mainly target small to midsized companies that want to enhance their numbers using an affiliate workforce.

The reason that I deal with Shareasale is because I consider it the "swiss army knife" of affiliate sites. It has what they call widgets or programs that help in the selling process. The level of specialization and ability to make your own pages with their software is very impressive. One of the first things that caught my eye was the "Get specific product linking code" link. This link will give you code for an individual product. This comes in very handy for bigger ticket items where the brand name alone may be enough to sell the product.

As I stated earlier in the article, this isn't an exhaustive list of affiliate management companies but instead is a broad representation of the industry.