what are some great affiliate programs for a general website?

[Andreas]

I currently got a website that gets good traffic, but the problem is that the website is pretty general and does not really targeting a niche. I use Adsense today and gets pretty good CPM from them but I am looking for an alternative source of revenue. Where do I find that?
Thanks in advance.

[Jake]

Any offers with broad appear may be candidates. Half of the world wants to lose weight.

If you get thousands of visitors a week, a banner ad broker like buyads.com or buysellads.com might be suitable. They handle the management headaches and give you ad approval unlike adsense.

Actually it's common for marketers who have had adsense success on your site to approach you about making direct buys, which might earn you perhaps 25% more cutting out the middleman.

[Marius Ghitulescu]

I'd recommend you to stick with AdSense. Being non-targeted traffic, it might prove pretty difficult to monetize with CPA offers or selling Banners, but you won't know unless you try. But, here's the trick question: why not both?

[sherry]

You need to look into the affiliate marketing field. There are major network players like Commission Junction and Shareasale that offer people like you opportunities to promote products from thousands of different merchants.

Both networks have features that you can research by product or by general searches. All of them pay commissions on sales referred by your website. Adsense is no match for affiliate marketing, especially if you can build individual pages around specialty types of products or niches.

All you really need is a decent website that is getting traffic to be accepted to their programs.

Having said that, I also want to recommend that you can join affiliate marketing forums that are very helpful to the new affiliate. Abestweb.com is one good place to get started. I know the moderators there and they are very knowledgeable in this field.

I have used this model of marketing since 2007 and I don't regret it at all. The entire experience has been challenging, profitable and I have met some good people through my efforts.

Good luck to you in your research.