A few common reasons why you may not be earning affiliate revenue:

1) You have too many outgoing LINKS on your pages. (Side bars can kill your affiliate revenue if you have too many banners, buttons, and things that don’t earn you revenue.)

2) Your affiliate links aren’t generating enough clicks. (see number 1)

3) You aren’t promoting your affiliate links across more than one venue. (i.e. you are only placing links in your sidebar.)

So how do you solve this? Take one of your programs (we’ll use TotSites as an example here ) and create a plan.

1) Place  a converting banner in the top fold of your side bar. I hate to say it – but 125 buttons do NOT click. Their click ratio – well stinks-  compared to a 160 by 600 skyscraper. What is it they say – go BIG or go home use an ADSERVER to get the most of your space.

2) Use your old content. Go through your old posts and  put the 500×100 banner across the bottom of your posts. This way you don’t take away from your post’s content  but give your readers somewhere to click when they are done reading your post.

3) Create a weekly post on a  relevant topic that contains the sites KEY WORDS. For Tot sites these could be any post related to your children. Schedule them to come out over the month.

4) Social Media->  If you have a Facebook  page or group share your affiliate links on your wall. Tweet your links out using a free service like hootsuite.com  to schedule a unique tweet every 3-4 days.

5) If you have a newsletter, plan to feature one of your affiliate programs in each one. Email the program manager and ask for a product ‘bio’, product image, and company logo.(if you don’t have a newsletter – it is time to get one- check out Mail chimp. It’s free for up to 500 subscribers.

6) Promote your affiliate links onsite, through social media, and email.(OK I repeated that – but it is important to NOT put all your eggs in one basket.)

7) Build traffic to your site.

Have realistic expectations of the numbers it takes to convert an ad on the Internet. Less than 4% of the clicks to any one ad will result in a sale.

9) Create quality SEO ‘d posts and pages relevant to the ads located on the page.

10) Unless you have a VERY niche site with very targeted banner ads – The side bar banner ads won’t be  your bread and butter. Your pages are. Place your banners and text links in your content.