Google Alerts is a free service offered by Google that will alert you to new content Google finds on the web that contains keywords you specify. Google Alerts is most commonly recommended as a way to monitor your brand – and your competition's brand – online. But I also use Google Alerts as a way to find out about new affiliate programs in my niche.

Setting up the alerts

Go to Google Alerts and enter a keyword for products or services in your niche followed by the phrase affiliate program. As an example, type the phrase SEO tools affiliate program into the alerts search box:

On the resulting screen, you'll see a preview of the results that alert would generate:

You can set Google Alerts up to email you those results on a once a day, once a week or an as it happens basis. I also limit the sources that trigger those alerts to blogs and web pages on most alerts I have setup to keep it less cluttered and more useful. The news results have little value for this kind of query and purpose.

Sometimes I'll limit the sources to web pages only if I find that the blog results produce too much fluff around the queries.

I also use this as a way to monitor specific merchants without affiliate programs for the launch of an affiliate program by creating an alert for [merchant name] “affiliate program” and limiting the source to web pages:

Creating Google Alerts for specific niche and merchant affiliate programs is a great way to passively find new revenue opportunities.