Skimlinks Review – Make Money off Website
If you want to monetize a website (make money off website), there are a lot of different ways at your disposal that will allow you to do so. And depending on the number of visitors on your website, you will find that there are a few tools available that are more effective in monetizing the site.
Yes, we know that getting visitors is the main problem, but once you are able to do that, you will realize that you need to make the most of these visitors and hopefully generate an income.
So what exactly is ‘monetizing your website?’ Well in the simplest explanation it means making money from your website in whichever way possible. How you actually go about doing so depends on which route you wish to take and the type of website you have.
Most people opt for affiliate marketing programs of only a few companies (see our Amazon Affiliate Post Here), but that isn’t always enough. On the other hand, it isn’t a practical or motivating option to spend hours at a stretch signing up for a lot of companies’ affiliate programs in hopes of a bounteous payday. But you don’t have to do that, as this is where Skimlinks comes in to save your time and help you get paid more.
So what is Skimlinks?
Skimlinks is a platform that signs up for hundreds and hundreds of affiliate programs of various companies on your behalf. As a result, you are not limited to only affiliate programs of only a handful of companies, and can also enjoy benefits of the less popular companies as well.
However, Skimlinks will keep 25% of the money you make from affiliate marketing. Well, considering how Skimlinks is connecting you to a plethora of affiliate companies, it is fair that it keeps a share. Although that finder’s fee is usually a standard 10%, there are lots of benefits of using Skimlinks, so the high percentage seems like a fair exchange.
One big reason why I started with Skimlinks was that they also re-direct your customer to the relevant site on Amazon. Becoming an Affiliate directly with Amazon means you have to sign up to individual countries separately as their sites work independently. So you would need one Affiliate for the UK, one for the US, one for Australia and so on.
With Skimlinks it is just one account. If your reader is in the UK but clicks on a product shown on the American site they will be re-directed to the UK site on the same or similar item. This is perfect for beginners trying out Affiliate Marketing.
How does it help the users make money?
A user of Skimlinks gets access to a huge base of affiliate programs. Any external merchants’ link you post on your website is automatically turned by Skimlinks to an affiliate link. Anytime someone learns about a merchant’s product or service from your website and buys it, you will get a portion of the sales as commission.
So once you have registered with Skimlinks and installed the necessary JavaScript on your website (easy to do), all you have to do is start posting quality written content for your website with sufficient links to the merchant’s website, and you’re done. Skimlinks then pays you for the sales commission you deserve.
Now if you wish to make more money, you need to play smart. Start noticing what your website’s visitors are interested about. As a Skimlinks Publisher, you will have access to a lot of tools that will provide you with insightful reports on the preferences of your website’s visitors.
You will soon be able to analyze and learn the pattern and trends, like what your audience read, which links they go to and what products they buy.
Once you understand that, you can then write more content related to your audience’s preferences. That means more of your audience will click the merchant links on your posts and buy from there, and as a result you will get more commission.
Another optional service called Skimwords, which is a concern of Skimlinks, goes through your written content, identifies keyword related to products, and automatically turns those into Skimlinks. Though and optional service, it is a brilliant touch to Skimlinks and can boost your pay.
Pros of using Skimlinks
To be honest, there are a few other platforms like Skimlinks. But Skimlinks seems to be better than them all. Here are top advantages of using Skimlinks.
- Skimlinks will give you access to a huge base of affiliate networks without signing up to them individually, you will be able to enjoy all the benefits of affiliate marketing with any one of them. In fact, Skimlinks will even let you do affiliate marketing with eBay!
- Perfect for beginners as it is FREE to join and comes with a user friendly interface, which is very easy to understand.
- The analytics and reports help you understand the current trends and preferences of your audience. You can utilize that insight to your benefit, and make the most out of it.
- Skimlinks has a lot of useful articles and links that you can use to further understand how to monetize the content of your website to maximize your earnings.
- The minimum payout is really low. Moreover, you will get your payment at the end of the month.
- The technology behind Skimlinks is efficient and reliable.
- You collect your pay from one network only. This is much better than pursuing ten different companies for meager commissions you earned from affiliate marketing with them.
- If your website has a lot of links in it already, Skimlinks can turn all those previous links to affiliate links. Yes, it’s not only effective for your future content, but also can help you monetize your past content on the website.
- Using Skimlinks saves you a lot of time.
- There may be some search engine optimization (SEO) benefits to be enjoyed from using Skimlinks.
- The payment system is reliable.
Cons of using Skimlinks
There aren’t many cons when it comes to Skimlinks. However, there are some points that you should be aware of.
- Skimlinks charges 25% of your sales commissions. Though their service is worth every bit, 25% may be a little too much to lose for some experienced Affiliate Marketers.
- Skimlinks must approve your website before you use its services there. This is done mostly to keep up the good reputation of both Skimlinks and its affiliates. Moreover, this will give you a chance to understand whether your website is good enough or not, and you can act accordingly. So this con is basically an opportunity rather than a con.
- The commissions usually takes up to 60 days to clear. That’s because the commission goes from the company to Skimlinks, and Skimlinks waits for all the companies to pay up. Then they make appropriate calculations and send you your pay.
In retrospect, we can see that there are multiple advantages of using Skimlinks, but not many downsides in comparison. Although there are a few other platforms that operates in a similar way, Skimlinks remain the undisputed champion, as its efficient and reliable methods actually works in monetizing your website.
Thumbs up from us to Skimlinks. We recommend you give it a try.