Linkshare: “A Great Little Earner”
More by luck than judgment, I recently discovered a great way to generate some extra cash from this blog. About 3 weeks ago, Starbucks and iTunes teamed up and launched a limited time offer where visitors to the famous coffee shop would be given a “Song of the Day” card containing a FREE download code. I blogged about it the first day they ran the promotion, more because I thought it was a cool idea than anything else.
A few days later I thought it may be possible to generate some return traffic if I posted a daily updated “Song of the Day” list. I also knew it was possible to promote iTunes via a blog or web site, and this is where Linkshare came into play. I applied to join their iTunes Affiliate Program (which currently pays 5% commission on all goods), and if I remember correctly was approved in a matter of hours.
Each morning I head over to the Starbucks Song of the Day site to find out who the featured artist for the day is. Next step is to log in to LinkShare and use the iTunes “Create a Link” tool to generate a text link which I add to my blog post. The whole process only takes a minute or two.
In the early days I was surprised to see a handful of sales and thought “this is quite cool”. Commission was less than a dollar per day, but better than nothing, right?
Today if you search for “song of the day download code” I’m #2 in Google’s Search results, which is sending hundreds of new visitors to my blog - many of whom are actually purchasing iTunes songs through my links.
Earnings after 23 days are now over $50.00, which isn’t too bad considering the (little) effort involved, and far more impressive than my current Google AdSense earnings 
Current stats (as of 10/24/07):
Impressions: 5135
Click-Throughs: 2242
# of Orders: 638
# of Items: 1279
# of Items Canceled: 0
Order/Click-Through: 28.46%
Sales ($): $1,018.33
Commission ($): 50.92
Update: 10/25/07: $61.81
Final update (as of 11/13/07):
Impressions: 8131
Click-Throughs: 5161
# of Orders: 1816
# of Items: 3492
# of Items Canceled: 0
Order/Click-Through: 35.19%
Sales ($): $2,302.23
Commission ($): 115.11
LinkShare have literally hundreds of affiliate options available and are the largest network of affiliate partners of any program provider (over 10 million partnerships), in addition to becoming the first affiliate network provider to achieve sustained profitability. The LinkShare network is touted by the company as the largest pay for performance affiliate marketing network on the Internet. [source: Wikipedia]
If you’d like to get on board and start earning some extra cash, join LinkShare today! Sign up is free, and you can even earn money by referring others to the network.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Feel free to leave a comment below or use the large green Contact button at the top of my side bar.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
October 25th, 2007 at 11:16 am
[…] Steve Speirs wrote an interesting post today on Linkshare: âA Great Little EarnerâHere’s a quick excerptLinkShare have literally hundreds of affiliate options available and are the largest network of affiliate partners of any program provider (over 10 million partnerships), in addition to becoming the first affiliate network provider to … […]
October 25th, 2007 at 11:19 am
[…] cymru66 wrote an interesting post today on Linkshare: âA Great Little EarnerâHere’s a quick excerpt More by luck than judgment, I recently discovered a great way to generate some extra cash from … iTunes via a blog or web site, and this is where Linkshare came into play. I applied to join … to the Starbucks Song of the Day site to find out who the featured artist for the day is. Next step is to log […]
October 25th, 2007 at 11:23 am
[…] cymru66 wrote an interesting post today on Linkshare: âA Great Little EarnerâHere’s a quick excerpt More by luck than judgment, I recently discovered a great way to generate some extra cash from … in to LinkShare and use the iTunes “Create a Link” tool to generate a text link which I add […]
October 25th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
that was a great tip, Steve. thanx for sharing
October 26th, 2007 at 7:20 am
What a great idea Steve. I have incorporated similar idea (placign jogging tracks on my sidebar), but so far no result yet. Let me try your tips now.
October 26th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
You really got great idea. Not bad earning, reasonably good! Thanks for the lead
Fruity
November 21st, 2007 at 12:47 am
Cool… Thanks for sharing.
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:44 am
Money Money Money, thanks for the tip Steve
November 29th, 2007 at 11:51 am
That looks like a great way to make some moolah. Thanks for the tip, I’ll look into it right now. Thanks again.
December 24th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Are you using any Wordpress plugins to help with this?