Webmasters
While I don’t put many affiliate links here on Hey, It’s Free!, I do realize that most other freebie sites are either loaded with them or contain at least a few. I’ve always said a ref link here or there isn’t bad, but when 90% of the links on your site have your ref code in them, you’re bound to start pissing off your visitors. However, if you’re looking to start a freebie site or even make a few bucks off your blog, I would greatly appreciate if you signed up under my referral links below. I either get a small percentage (usually somewhere around 2%) of whatever you make or a flat “finders fee” if you reach a certain amount. (For instance, if you sign up, make $100, then I get $100 and that’s it. If you go on to make millions, I get nothing more than the initial $100 I was paid.)
- Personally, I monetize Hey, It’s Free through mainly two methods. The first and foremost is through Google’s Adsense, which is where I gain most of my money. Their ads are unobtrusive, can be customized to fit your color scheme, and easy for users to identify and know what they are clicking on. I don’t feel I trick my users by placing these ads on the site and often times, Google Adsense is so smart, it optimizes the ads for your website, so that on Hey, It’s Free! you will see adds for other freebies sites out there instead of ads for lawyers and car insurances. Overall, I am very please with Adsense and would highly suggest it to any webmaster out there, no matter what type of site you are running!
The only other program I really use here on Hey, It’s Free is called Maxbounty. They have a few different offers that tout free things, such as t-shirts and magazines. I did get two magazine subscriptions from them for free, which is why I started using them as a ref company, so if you are looking for another affiliate company, check out Maxbounty.
The following companies are ones that I don’t use here on HIF, but that I have used in the past or currently on other websites. They all contain PPC (paid per click) and PPA (pay per action) offers, where if you can get the user to sign up for a trial with a certain program, you get XX amount of dollars (usually in the 20-40 range):
PrimaryAds is another good PPC company that offers many listings of freebies, such as gum and candy samples, giftcards, etc amongst all their PPA offers. I’m not sure how many of these are actually free for the user and to be honest, they might be but I just haven’t looked further into them. But if that doesn’t really bother you, then I’d suggest adding PrimaryAds into your affiliate portfolio.
From what I can tell, BulletAds is like a carbon clone of PrimaryAds. In fact, I think they may be owned by the same company, but don’t quote me on that. They do have freebie offers as well, and they usually tend to be different than the ones over on PrimaryAds, which means that if you sign up with them, you might want to do the same with BulletAds and use them together.
Clickbooth is just like the two above, with both PPC and PPA offers. Again, I use this network in conjunction with the two listed above on another website and it seems like they do well together for me. Unless you have a gigantic site with a tens of thousands of visitors a day, you won’t get rich off one of these programs alone. But if you sign up for Clickbooth as well as the others and use your ref codes wisely, you can make a decent chunk of change every day and have some playing around money at the end of the month.
I haven’t used HydraMedia that much, but only because on my other sites I already had enough affiliate programs as it was. It goes without saying though that it can never hurt to keep your options open and so you might want to sign up with HydraMedia just to see what current offers that have. I found a few over on their network that I couldn’t find anyplace else and so it was times like those that I was glad I had signed up with them.
