How To Select An Affiliate Program

F. Terrence Markle How To Select An Affiliate Program

Copyright © F. Terrence Markle – All Rights Reserved

Are you having difficulties in selecting an internet affiliate program to join and promote? Too many opportunities to sort through? Uncertain of your next step? Guess what – you are not alone. Join the crowd! You will probably find the road full of potholes in your research, review and selection of the right affiliate program for you.

You should consider the following steps to help you make the decision on which affiliate program to join and promote. First, you need to find the affiliate programs that are available for you to join and promote. Second, you need to sort through all these opportunities to learn the details of each affiliate program. Third, you need to select a program (or programs) that fits your wants and needs (whatever they may be).

I am making the basic assumption that you want to select a program that will result in cash flowing into your pocket rather than flowing out of your pocket. Look out for the potholes in the road. There are a lot of them out there. You should keep in mind that most affiliate program will not make any promises regarding your future potential earnings or lack of earnings. Warning – Avoid any program that makes promises that seem unrealistic or too good to be true.

You should review a wide selection of affiliate programs before you decide which program (or programs) is right for you. As painful as it sounds, you need to do the research before making any decision. You should perform sufficient (and not necessarily exhaustive) research to understand what programs exist and what they provide to the affiliate (promoter/seller) and customer (buyer). The amount of research you perform depends on what you need to make an informative decision.

The process of research is probably the most painful and yet the most educational part of setting up an online internet business. Do not cut it short because you will probably pay for it dearly in different ways at a later date. This includes spending unnecessary money, pursuing the wrong marketing paths and just plain wasting your time and energy.

It is essential to perform thorough research if you are going to profit from any promotional effort of an affiliate program. It is an established fact that commercial success starts with having a product to sell (hopefully a product that provides value, usefulness and/or happiness to the buyer of the product). It is another well known fact that the economics picture is not complete without a seller and a buyer that are willing and able to sell and buy the product. Warning - Do not get involved with an affiliate program where it is uncertain what comprises the actual product being sold.

Many factors, including the selling price of the product and the total cost of the product (potential costs include manufacturing, storing, distributing, marketing, and selling), need to be evaluated to determine if a profit can be made on the promotion and sale of an affiliate product. As a side note, the difference between financial success and failure could be a simple matter of promoting a product that has more appeal or intrinsic value to the potential buyer than the cost of the product.

The research process should consist of gathering sufficient information on potential opportunities that will enable you to make an informed decision on what affiliate program(s) to join and promote. You will need to devote precious time and energy to accomplish this phase of the affiliate selection process.

In order to locate the affiliate opportunities, you should start by using a national search engine. Select “key words” in your search (such as: affiliate opportunities, affiliate ebook, affiliate networks, affiliate income, affiliate marketing, etc) to locate opportunities. Be innovative and change the search word(s) to match your personal needs and interest.

You should probably direct your attention to the top 10 to 20 search results for any key word group since these are likely to be the websites with the highest level of internet traffic. Higher traffic is an indicator that the website gets visitors and is probably in demand. Demand is important since it is one part of the economic “demand versus supply” equation.

Write down the appropriate information from each website that will provide you with data to review after you complete your online searching. You should probably print out the sales letter and any other useful information that will help in your follow-up review and evaluation. Part of your research will include communicating with the owner of each website that you are considering.

In addition, join some of the internet discussion boards and chat rooms that discuss the topic of affiliate programs. This can potentially provide a wealth of information in your review and comparison process. You can use the search engines to find these discussion boards and chat rooms.

Another source of information resides in ebooks and ezine articles that have already been written on the subject of affiliate programs and affiliate marketing. You can locate these ebooks and articles by using the search engines. Do not hesitate to communicate with the authors. Work with the authors because it may help you in your quest for usable information. You may find some authors willing to discuss your specific concerns since it may provide them with useful material for their future use.

In the process of performing your research, you will be compiling a lot of hand-written notes and web page printouts of potential affiliate programs. Furthermore, you will probably accumulate material on your computer’s hard drive of website pages on affiliate programs that you had an interest in performing a follow-up analysis upon.

The process of research is not only time consuming but also may consume some of your money. How much money you spend depends on the types of programs you are considering. Furthermore, you may have to join a program or purchase something (for example, buy the ebook that is being promoted) in order to get the information you need for your review and evaluation phase. You should always ask for a free copy – it does not hurt to try.

Keep yourself organized by putting the paper information (hand-written notes and web page printouts) into 3-ring binders. Use tab inserts to separate each affiliate program. Each tab insert should be labeled with an appropriate affiliate program title. This will enable easy identification of each program in the binder and access to the detailed data.

The next step is to make a “summary table” that includes each affiliate program you are considering. The summary table should contain information on each affiliate program such as: name of the program, URL website, definition of what the program offers to the affiliate, description of what is offered to the customer of the product, cost of the program to the customer, commission payable to the affiliate, description of the downline sales commissions (if any), training available to the affiliate by the owner of the product, sales material available to the affiliate, etc.

Next, you need to review, evaluate and compare the various affiliate programs at a summarized level. This is the phase of utilizing all the information that you collected, categorized and organized during the search phase. This process can now be accomplished with considerably less stress and anxiety than just looking at a list of affiliate programs.

You now have the important and essential information (that fulfills your needs) necessary to make an informed decision. The summary table provides you with the data to compare the different affiliate opportunities (whether it is only two or many).

At this point, your review and evaluation process will probably lead to more questions. However, your questions should now be very targeted. Any follow-up research you need to perform to obtain answers should be highly focused.

Make certain you communicate with the owner of each affiliate program to gain as much knowledge as possible about the respective affiliate program. The owner of the program should be anxious to hear your questions and help you since it could result in increased revenue to the owner. Make your questions as direct and to the point as possible to uncover your deepest concerns.

Finally, what did you achieve or learn from your search of ebooks and ezine articles on the topic of affiliate topics? Use this information in your decision process. You should communicate with the author(s) if you found something of interest that can help you in your eventual decision. The author(s) should also be willing to talk to you since it could result in material for future ebooks they might write.

I hope you find this information valuable and worth your time in reading. A decision based on having the appropriate information is definitely worth more than a decision made by “guessing.” This article is just the beginning. You will find your niche in affiliate programs by performing a proper research, review and comparison of available programs before making your informed decision. Good luck in your quest to find the right affiliate program(s) for your future personal and financial success.

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Copyright © 2003 F. Terrence Markle – All Rights Reserved.
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About the Author

F. Terrence Markle has been involved with private startup opportunities for the past 4 years. He has an MBA in finance and marketing. His focus is marketing of affiliate programs.