Making Money Using Affiliate
Programs
In this holiday season online shopping is hotter than
ever! According to US Commerce Department online sales continue to grow
with a robust 25-27 percent this year. Online holiday shopping at a rate
of 10 percent is also considerably outpacing the 5.7 percent growth of
overall retail sales. Goldman Sachs predicts 23 percent of all gift-buying
this holiday season will take place online!
So, if you don’t have a product of your own to sell online,
how can you profit from this exciting trend?
One of the finest ways of making money online is to promote
other people’s products or services by becoming their affiliates. Affiliate
is a term used for a website that drives traffic to another website in
exchange for a predetermined commission.
Thanks to the success of several affiliate programs in
the early days of online business, most merchant websites, today, use some
kind of affiliate programs to promote their sites and generate sales.
Considering the sheer numbers of affiliate programs available
on the Internet, you may feel overwhelmed. However, if you set some basic
criteria, it would be lot easier to find a good program that suits your
need.
Free sign up
The affiliate program that you are planning to join must
be absolutely free. There are way too many good programs available for
free, why should you pay for one? Moreover, the programs that require payments
to join are mostly multi Level Marketing (MLM) programs. Although, there
may be many good MLM programs existing on the Internet, I don’t think it’s
a viable option for an average person.
Good commission
You deserve handsome compensation for all your hard work!
No matter, how you look into it, in most of the cases, promoting a product
or service is not an easy job. Since you are doing the uphill struggle
of bringing the client to the merchant’s door, your commission should be
real good one. What is an acceptable commission anyway? If you are promoting
an information product, don’t go for less than 50 percent. For more tangible
products and services your bare minimum commission should be 15 percent
of the sale. If you are promoting monthly subscription, choose a program
that pays a portion of subscription fee as recurring commission to you
as long as the client referred by you stays subscribed.
Tow-tier affiliate program
An affiliate program which pays certain percent as a
commission from the sale for bringing in a client and another if that client
brings in other clients. Two-tier affiliate programs are more preferable
since once a client base is built, it becomes a great source of residual
income.
Quality affiliate tracking system
The merchant should have a very good and well-organized
affiliate sales tracking management software system. You have to be absolutely
comfortable with the statistics generated by the affiliate program. The
program should show such important aspects as repurchase, if any, by the
client referred by you, your second tier affiliates, activities by your
second tier clients, etc. If you do not feel comfortable with the tracking
system provided by a merchant, better stick to the merchants, who use third
party affiliate managing system. At least, you will know that a dishonest
merchant won’t be able to defraud you.
Efficient customer support
You should feel satisfied with the service and support
you get from your affiliate program owner. A good program highly values
its affiliates and gives priority to its customer support system. As the
clients that you are sending to the merchant are primarily your site’s
visitors, you should be extremely picky about the quality of customer service
the program renders. After all, your own site’s reputation is also at stake
here!
Promotional materials
If you are planning to promote an affiliate program,
you will need more materials then mere banners. Unfortunately, even many
high-end affiliate programs do not carry enough promotional materials to
satisfy the need of the affiliates. Promotional material should include:
contents to build mini-sites, various ad articles, different kind of text
links, product brochures or presentation, etc.
Commission payment policy
The affiliate program should have a sort of minimum payment
policy, where you can receive commissions if even you have made just one
or two sales. A reasonable amount is US $25. Less than that is not viable
due to processing costs. Commission should be paid each month. If you are
located outside of US, see if the merchant makes payment through Paypal
or other similar services or not. For most of the countries checks issued
in other countries are not a good option.
If an affiliate program meets all these above mentioned
criteria, you can consider joining in this program. However, to get best
result from your efforts, before signing up, you should also consider the
following rules: You have to like the product you are promoting Any salesman
will confirm you that this is one of the fundamental rules of selling.
If you are selling a product or service you must have confidence in it.
If you like the product and will use it yourself gladly, you found a product
to promote! Don’t waste your time with a product that is not up to your
taste! Promote a product or service consistent to your website’s subject
matter If your site is all about soccer, you will be better off with products
and service related to soccer. If this same site promotes, for example:
pesticides, no matter how hard you try your success will be very limited!
Before joining in any affiliate program first you should identify who your
visitors are, what do they like and which products they will probably buy
online. Once you know your niche market it’s lot easier to find products
or services for it.
Many webmasters think that in order to make money through
affiliate programs, all you have to do is to come up with a site and fill
up the site with affiliate links. Sooner all later people will click on
them. Unfortunately this does not work! Making money through affiliate
programs is also a business and like any business you have to have a proper
business plan. Only a well prepared business plan followed by its meticulous
implementation can bring success to your affiliate endeavor.
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