5 Surefire Ways to Choose the Best Affiliate Programs to Promote
When I first thought about making money online in 1999, over 10 years ago, I quickly learned about affiliate programs as a way of supplementing a monthly income. I didn’t know there were good affiliate programs and bad ones. I just knew there were companies willing to pay me for posting their link up and id make a million dollars. This article is going to explain 5 very important but basic ways to get started in promoting affiliate programs and what to look out for when choosing a program to ensure you don’t waste time or money.
If I had known these 5 ways to join the best affiliate program when I first started 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have wasted thousands of dollars promoting products that were never destined to sell nor working with companies that were stiffing me for my commission each month.
The most important things to look out for when choosing an affiliate program to promote are:
1. Do Your Own Background Check. This is very important from the beginning because you want to make sure that your promoting a real company. Its easy on the internet to setup a shell company which is used to take money from visitors but never deliver on the product, or which sales low quality products or services..
You want to make sure that the business you seek to promote has a physical address somewhere even its an apartment address. As long as they have some where for you to track them down when and if you should ever not get a commission check for services rendered.
Doing a background check on the company also allows you to find out what the rest of the web is thinking about their business. Find out if they are providing excellent customer services and if they deliver orders in a timely manner. Also if a company is selling retail goods check to see what other venues they are using to sale their products. Most of the vendors like eBay and Amazon.com have a high standard of service that the company must offer to customers in order to keep using that vendor to propagate their products. This is a very quick way to see if your dealing with a reputable company.
2. Check In On the Affiliates, Are They Happy? Never start promoting a program without checking to see if the current affiliates are happy with the program and most importantly if they are making money with the program. I worked a few programs in the past, where I spent a great deal of time generating traffic to my affiliate links only to get stiffed on my commission check because the program was bogus to start with. A company can promise you the world, but if the forums, blogs and message boards are saying something different, then you might want to keep looking.
An affiliate program will have a forum or blog or something where their affiliates can ask questions about the program. If your interested in the program, join the forum and simply introduce yourself and start asking questions. This helps you get a realistic ideas as to what you can earn with this program.
3. Know Your Niche Market. This should actually be number one. Knowing your niche market can make or break your affiliate marketing business. I started off in the affiliate marketing game by building websites with a bunch of random affiliate links and promoting my products to anyone who I could get to visit my website. This is the wrong idea! You want to make sure that you are specifically targeting your product to those people who would be interested in purchasing it. This will lead to a greater chance of success and longevity of consistent conversions. Paying attention to your readers and what they are interested in is key and critical.
4. Determine which type of Program you will promote. There are several types of affiliate programs to choose from when creating your affiliate marketing business. In this article we are going to discuss the Pay-Per-Sale, and the Pay-Per-Click programs. The pay per sale program will pay the affiliate for every sale that he/she generates by referring unique visitors to the affiliate website via their affiliate link. The pay per click program will pay the affiliate for every unique visitor that the affiliate refers to the affiliate website via their affiliate link. Both of these types of affiliate programs can be very lucrative to the affiliate marketer and he/she will want to consider their options well based on what type of traffic the affiliate is sending through his/her affiliate link
If the affiliate is sending non targeted traffic through his affiliate link, then it would be advantageous for the affiliate marketer to choose the pay-per-click option. This way you will still get paid even if the visitor is compelled to click but is not interested in the product. If the affiliate marketer is focusing on a target market then it would be beneficial for him to sign up to a pay-per-sale program, because his traffic will in most cases be interested in the products and/or services that he/she is promoting.
5. Test your affiliate link. Sometimes when you are really motivated to promote a particular program and you may want to test the program by ordering something through your affiliate link. This way you can get a clear picture as to how you will be paid and if your link works. If there is not a payout minimum, you can even request your commission payment, to see how quickly you are paid for sales generated. After a successful text of your affiliate link and you have been credited for the sale generated, and you have been paid for the sale. Now it is safe to begin a full campaign promoting the program.
Sean Gaden
SofreeWeb, LLC
sofreeweb.com
DVD Affiliate Program, 2 Tier, PayPal Payout, Signup Bonus
The Good Company Affiliate Program
http://www.thegoodcompanystore.com/affiliates/index.php
Author: Sean Gaden
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger
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