Choosing Good Affiliate Programs
Thursday, November 16, 2006
When you first start out trying to make money online with affiliate
programs, you quickly find there are thousands of programs to choose
from. And figuring out the best ones to sign up for can sometimes take
a bit of time and effort. In some cases... you may even find yourself
going through a bit of trial and error in the beginning too.
Thankfully though, there are many things you can look for before
signing up with an affiliate program, and these will help you to know
whether it's a good match for you or not.
1. What are the affiliate program's terms of service? This can be a
make or break deal, because if an affiliate program does not allow you
to use Google AdWords for marketing for instance - and this is the
method you've chosen to earn money - then signing up with them will do
you no good. So read through their terms of service first.
A word of warning here: Steer clear of any affiliate programs which do
not publically post their terms of service.
2. What are their payment specifics? This is important as well,
because you need to know both how much money you can earn, plus how
often that money will come in. If an affiliate program pays 10% of all
sales, that means when you sell something worth $100, you'll get $10
in commissions. This isn't bad if the product is good and the market
is large enough, but if the affiliate program only pays you when
you've earned $1000 in commissions, you'll need to make a lot of sales
before you'll see any of that money in your own bank account.
If on the other hand, the affiliate program only sends your earnings
to you every three months, it won't matter if you've generated $1000
every day in commissions... you're still going to wait quite a long
time before you can actually spend the money you've earned.
3. What does their website look like? This doesn't always occur to
affiliate marketers, but the way your affiliate program's website
looks plays a very big part in how well you can earn money promoting
their products or services.
If you visit the merchant website and see Google Adsense ads all over
it for instance, you'd probably be better off not promoting that
program. Why? Because you could send 1000 visitors to the site, and
have 500 of them click on the merchant's Adsense ads instead of
buying. That earns money for the merchant but it does NOT earn money
for you.
Affiliates usually only earn money if a product is directly sold. So
you don't want to promote a page or site that has other earning
streams in place for the advertiser, that you as the affiliate would
not earn anything from.
A similar problem is when the merchant website has their own affiliate
links to other merchants. You are sending your traffic to them,
expecting to make sales that will earn you money through thier
affiliate program. If they in fact are promoting other merchants as an
affiliate themselves, then your traffic could end up clicking one of
their affiliate links to another merchant. Again this would earn them
money but not you.
So there are three starter tips to helping you choose good affiliate
programs. I'll have more articles covering this topic for you in the
near future.
© 2006, Kathy Burns-Millyard. Want to learn more about <A
HREF="http://www.easysidemoney.com/affiliate-project-x.html">affiliate
marketing</A> now? Check out these excellent affiliate marketing
resources at <A HREF="http://www.easysidemoney.com">EasySideMoney.com</A>
posted by Dennis Cheesman @ 5:31 AM,
