Getting Rich from Affiliate Programs

Some times it pays to work with others. In this article we will discuss how to make money with affiliate programs.

Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs or Partnership Programs) are essentially commission-based sales schemes. You recommend a site to your users and pick up a percentage of any sales those users generate. You benefit from the commission and the site benefits from sales it wouldn’t otherwise have made. If you’ve ever gone to a website and seen links to Amazon, those were affiliate links.

You can run an affiliate program from a site you’ve already set up, or create a site specially to promote a product or service. As long as it brings in more cash than you spend on building it and buying traffic, you’re laughing.

Affiliate ads work two ways: you can join them to make money, or you can run one to attract users.

Joining An Affiliate Program

As with any marketing venture, you need to be careful in the selection of an affiliate program. The benefit of an affiliate program is that it gives you another way to make money from your users. Instead of selling them a product yourself, you send them to a partner and take a cut.

On the downside though, your affiliate ads will take the place of a different ad that you could have put in that same spot. You have to make sure that each advertising position on your site is bringing in the maximum revenue possible. If you’re not getting the most from your site, you’re tossing money away.

The key to success is to choose the right program, right from the beginning.

Now, a lot of commercial sites run affiliate programs. That’s because they know that they only have to pay a commission if a sale is actually made; it’s a proven way to generate revenue without risk. What that means for you is that when it comes to choosing an affiliate program, you’re going to have a huge range to choose from. What it all boils down to though is product and price.

While it might be tempting to go for the program that pays the highest commissions, the program won’t pay you a penny if your users won’t go there or won’t buy once they get there. You have to be certain that the service you’re promoting is of genuine interest to the kind of users you buy, whether you’re buying them from search engines or anywhere else.

Sure, you can work backwards: You find a high-paying affiliate program and create a small site to send users to it, but do you know where to buy users for a program like that? You’re going to have to research the field, check out the most popular sites, and negotiate banner campaigns and link exchanges.

That’s fine if you want to invest the time and the effort. But it’s much easier to find an affiliate program operating in a field you’re familiar with, and use that program to earn extra cash.

For example, suppose you had set up a dating site. You might make bit of money selling subscriptions, but you might make even more by joining Match.com’s affiliate program and selling them your users. Unless you’re planning to be the Internet’s biggest dating site, you’re not going to be able to compete directly and beat them, but you can join them—and earn money.

Or rather than sell your users directly to a ‘competitor’, you can look for services that complement your own. Visitors to your dating site, for example, might be interested in buying flowers, books on relationships or tickets on singles cruises. Instead of selling just one product—membership subscriptions—you’d be selling a whole range of different goods to the same people, and increasing the sources of your income.

Here are some tips to selecting an affiliate program that is lucrative and right for you:

• Don’t accept less than 25% commission. You can find affiliate programs with great payment structures and high percentages of the purchase price in just about every field.
• Look for comprehensive statistics pages that list the number of click-throughs, sales and earnings so you can see how you’re doing. The information should be broken down by month.
• Look for programs that offer a wide variety of promotional tools to put on your Web page, including text links, banners and graphics.
• Find out how often you will be paid and make sure that the payment schedule meets your expectations. Some programs pay monthly, others quarterly; which is best for you?
  
• Look for examples of marketing methods that successful affiliates are using to get the best results.
• Make sure that top level support is given. If they can’t answer your questions promptly and intelligently, you don’t want to work with them.
  

Affiliate programs offer a viable solution to competing against larger competitors and still make money. As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them, joint them!

How to Attract Affiliates

In this article we will discuss how to attract affiliates to you program.

One of the biggest fears new Affiliate managers have is in finding new affiliates. This fear is a stumbling block that stops many site owners from getting started with affiliate marketing. Interestingly, with a proper marketing strategy, getting affiliates may not be very difficult.

Given below are some tips that may help in attracting new affiliates.

• Find complimentary sites - "Complementary" sites are a sites that sell products or services that compliment your offerings. If you sell "gardening tools", a site that sells books on "gardening tips" would be a perfect affiliate. If you sell software, try looking for sites that sell computers or computer parts. Finding sites that already attract your target market, and can benefit from recommending your product or service to their visitors, is the goal.
• Find content sites – There are many sites that do not sell any kind of product or service but are mainly content-oriented sites. Such sites promote an idea, concept, study or belief. Content sites that are used as a resource for your target market are ideal affiliates.
• Finally, there are several sites on the Internet dedicated to listing affiliate Programs. Get your program listed in these directories.
  

Classifying Affiliates for better management

The hardest part of administrating an Affiliate Program is deciding what your affiliates need to help make the sale. But, by carefully categorizing your affiliates, you can easily determine what their needs are and how to accurately meet them. The plan given below helps in categorizing affiliates in order to manage your affiliate program better.

The first step is to pick at least three types of affiliates. Take a look at your affiliates and try to determine one outstanding characteristic that can easily be compared across the board and choose at least three types of the characteristic. Here are some examples:

• Level of Sales - You may find that your affiliates are so completely different that it's hard to find something to classify them by. Try classifying them by the level of sales they've reached with you. You'll most likely find that you have a few forerunners that lead the pack with a number of sales, quite a few affiliates that have sporadically made a sale or two and some that have yet to make a sale. This will help you classify them based on sales.
• Products - If you sell a wide variety of products for specific interests/needs you may be able to classify your affiliates by product. For instance, a financial site could classify types like Personal Finance, Small Business Finance, and Corporate Finance.
• Industry - If you market commodities like office supplies, health and beauty products, house-wares and so on, you may find that your affiliates come from a wide variety of industries. You can most likely classify your affiliates according to their industry.
  

The Second Step is to determine the needs of each type. Each of your affiliate types will have different needs; some of their needs will overlap, but you should find a distinct difference in many of their needs. If you find that all of them have the same needs, go back to step one and re-think your types.

Here are some basic things to look for:

• Linking Methods - Different types of affiliates will need different linking methods. Let's use the example above where we had different groups based on sales. Your low sales group may be satisfied with a banner or two to place on their site. Your medium sales type may be interested in an article or two for added content on their site. Your high sales group will probably pass up banners for articles, guestbooks, email ads and signature files.
• Capturing visitors is what you want. In order to do so -- you have to know what they want. Visit your affiliates' sites to see what visitors are looking at and looking for. Ask yourself, "How does my product relate to what I am seeing?"
• Different types of affiliates may expect different commissions. You'll have some Affiliates that have joined your program "on the side" and others that plan on earning a substantial income from the program. Determine what effort they are putting into advertising, how much other programs in your industry are paying, and the amount of time they devote to your program.
  

The Third Step involves the process of creating and compiling linking methods for each group of affiliates. Based on the needs you identified in Step two, create and compile linking methods for each type. Here are a few linking methods to think about.

• Banners - Though they aren't as effective as other linking methods, banners are still widely used and expected. Make banners in a variety of sizes to fit tops of pages, bottoms, toolbars, sidebars and other miscellaneous areas.
• Articles - These are great for affiliates that need content for their websites and newsletters. Be sure that your articles are articles and not ads.
• Email Ads - Your active affiliates may be interested in placing ads in e-zines or their own newsletters. Try writing a few ads in different lengths.
• Signature Files - Dedicated affiliates may even add your tag to their signature line. Give them a few witty lines to choose from.
• Guestbooks: - Let your affiliates help you build your Opt-In email lists with guestbooks. Offer them a commission for each email address they send you, or each resulting sale from the subscribers they send you.
• Product Images - Give your affiliates images that show and link directly to specific products. They'll be able to choose an image specific to their site, or choose several images to display.
• Review each affiliate Type and match them up with your new linking methods. You may have some linking methods that overlap Types -- this is okay. Just be sure you are concentrating on the affiliates' needs.
  

The Fourth Step is to decide commission levels. Your first decision will be to determine whether you want to pay a flat rate or percentage of each sale. Based on the needs you identified above for each of the affiliate types, decide on a commission amount for each Type. If you have a two-tier program, consider the possibility of different second tier rates as well.

The Fifth Step is to devise promotions for affiliate groups. Once you have your affiliates properly categorized and your system under control, consider developing promotions for your affiliate groups. Give them special incentives to sell more during a certain time frame, move seasonal products, or increase business during your slow months. Offer them additional commissions, or even bonuses for reaching a specific amount of sales.

In conclusion, if you follow the steps I have just outlined and if you are ready for a little work and a lot of organization, your affiliate program should be up and running in no time.

A few avoidable errors when promoting your affiliate program

In this article, I have listed a quick and easy bulleted list of does and do not’s when trying to promote your affiliate program.

• Many affiliate marketers make a huge mistake of posting their ads on forums. Forums can be used to promote your affiliate programs and your website but in a proper manner. Posting banners is very similar to spamming and may easily upset forum administrators.
• Always do your research before promoting your affiliate program to a potential customer. Do not offer affiliate programs to visitors who are not at all interested in the products associated with the program. This is a futile endeavor.
• If you promote affiliate programs offered by other merchants, ensure that you develop your own advertising copy. Many websites commit a common mistake of using the same advertising copy as used by the merchant themselves.
• Avoid Copyright infringement in all cases. Always use original content or ask permission to use graphic images or text found on other websites.
• Do not submit your programs to free websites. These may be free but your programs would hardly ever be noticed, especially by Search Engines. Moreover, your own ranking would get lowered if you submit your affiliate programs to such websites.
• Avoid using caps on your web page or email ad. Using caps is symbolic to shouting, which never goes well with potential customers. A few words may be written in capital text to give them additional emphasis. However, such practice should be limited.
• Always respond to all queries sent by visitors as soon as possible. A slight delay in your response could easily result in loss of a potential client.
• Do not use pop-up ads along with your webpage. Most surfers are likely to close their browser if they come across pop-ups.
• Do not host your website on a free server or use free email accounts. This gives a negative impression to visitors. Using free hosts and email accounts looks cheesy and loses sales.
• Many websites do not have an opt-in list. Create an opt-in and opt-out list for your visitors. Without these, there is no way of tracking potential customers. Visitors should be allowed to opt-in at any time as well as opt-out at any time.
• Most sites have a poor tracking mechanism. It is essential that you track all business activities. Accurate record keeping is crucial. There are many software tools, discussed earlier in this chapter, than can automate your record keeping process with minimal error.
• A 'mall' site is best used as a central hub to send visitors to your other domains. As a main or only site, unfocused mall sites don't get traffic from the engines, and they don't convert well to sales. Highly focused theme sites attract traffic and sales.
• Offline advertising may not be effective. A lot of money and effort should not be wasted on offline advertising. Most people rarely check websites that are advertised in local magazines or newspapers.
• Avoid focus on animated banner ads. These simply use up bandwidth, thus making web pages load slower.
• While advertising do not degrade other competitors. It is recommended that you highlight your products’ uniqueness and superiority but never mortify other products.
• Banners or text links that expire are guaranteed to eventually send your visitor to a broken link or show a broken graphic on your page. Time sensitive advertising is best used only in email advertising campaigns.
• Never put affiliate links on your homepage. This is similar to asking your visitors to leave immediately. Give them a chance to browse, sign up for your newsletter and decide that they'd like to come back to your place before introducing them to your affiliates.
• Technology changes with amazing speed. To keep up with this rapidly evolving industry, you must invest time and money in research. The investment is a tax write-off, and will pay you back many times over in additional revenue.
  

Hopefully this list has proven helpful to you and has shown you some red flags to avoid when it comes time to promote your own affiliate site. Good luck and take care.