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Entry
Level Affiliate Marketers.
What
are affiliate programs?
Affiliate
programs (also called reseller programs, associate programs, commission
based programs or profit sharing) are programs where you (webmaster)
advertise another website on your site. This is usually done by
placing banners, buttons, pop-up windows, text-links or/and promotion
articles with your affiliate link on your site. Anytime you send
someone to your affiliated website, you can make money. Sometimes
there are pay per click, pay per sale or pay per lead options
that pay various amounts to you.
Affiliate
programs aren't get-rich-quick businesses, but rather more deeply
rooted business systems which can make long term incomes for the
website owners.
There
are other kinds of affiliate programs such as 2 tier systems and
multi tier systems, which you can read about with the links on
the top left of the page.
There
are hundreds of thousands of people marketing affiliate programs
online these days. Amazon.com alone has more than 100,000 affiliates.
There wouldn't be that many people doing this if nobody was making
money with it. However, not every affiliate will make bucketloads
of cash. It takes a little work and desire to constantly learn
to be really successful. If you take your affiliate program business
seriously, it can easily surpass the income generated from a 9-5
job. It really depends on the market you are going after, how
popular your site is (number of visitors you get), how targeted
your ads are to your visitors and so on.
Try
to keep your affiliate links targeted toward the visitors of your
site. Many people try to send offers to their visitors for things
they are not interested in. Not only does this reduce your clickthrough
rate to your affiliate partner sites, it also makes you look like
you are a random and useless website. Chances are you will not
get return visitors, which means you will make less money from
them.
If
you want to have many target markets, build a separate website
for each market, and target smaller niches with each site. Even
though you will get less traffic and income from a smaller site,
you will have several smaller sites working together, which combined
will earn more than one massive, end all site. Many small streams
create a large river. Same things are true with multiple small
revenue streams.
Too
many webmasters fall for the hyped claims and signup with several
affiliate programs without any consideration.
Here
are a few things to check for before joining a program:
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Check the websites Alexa Rating. Although it does not always determine
whether a site is legit or not, it can help you find more established
partners. To learn more about Alexa ratings, check out alexa.com.
Download the free toolbar and begin checking out sites. The lower
the alexa number, the more established a website tends to be.
-
Buy whatever you are going to be promoting first. The only way
to know if the product you are promoting is good or not. You don't
want to ruin your reputation by promoting bad products.
-
Study the terms of the affiliate agreement carefully. See how
often they pay their affiliates, if there are any minimum requirements
to get paid, etc.
-
If an affiliate merchant offers more than one product on his web
site, be sure that you will be paid commission on ALL your referral
sales of ALL products.
-
Make sure the affiliate program you join gives you the ability
to check your earnings statistics. Many these days offer real-time
stats, where you can log in and check how much you have made up
to the minute.
-
Does the affiliate partner site offer support to their affiliates?
Try to find partners that care about their affiliates (changing
banners, giving you good marketing help, etc).
-
Try to find out the partner website's conversion rate. How many
sales do they make per 100 visitors? The higher the conversion
rate, the more you should make.
-
Avoid any program that tried to make you pay to be an affiliate.
These are almost always scams. Why should you have to pay them
to sell products FOR THEM. They benefit just as you do from an
affiliate relationship. Don't pay for the "oppotunity"
to sell for them.
Where
should you place the affiliate links and banners, etc?
We
have found the best way to market affiliate programs is to try
to make the affiliate links look the least like advertisements
as possible. Internet users are naturally skeptical when purchasing
online. You want to reduce that skeptisicm as much as possible.
Try to write a review of a product and convice your visitors how
great the product is, rather than have them click on a flashing
banner. Your sales conversion rate will increase dramatically.
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