Getting Rich from Affiliate Programs

Eric White 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.

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Joining An Affiliate Program
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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!
Until next time,

About the Author

Eric White
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