How To Maximize Your Profit Promoting Affiliate Programs

Promoting affiliate programs can provide you with a good extra income or even a full time income online.

To help you maximize your profit promoting affiliate programs, I've provided the following tips to help you successfully market your affiliate programs more effectively to your site's visitors.

1. Publish an e-zine.

Running an e-zine will allow you to run prime position ads for your affiliate programs in every issue you publish, and is the #1 way for you to follow up with your site's visitors.

You can also easily increase your commissions by sending out special announcements to your subscriber base whenever one of the affiliate programs you promote is offering a special bonus or a special limited time offer.

Once you build up your circulation you can further increase your profits by charging for ad space in your publication.

2. Use a pop up on your site that promotes your e-zine.

Using a pop up as a well as a subscription e-mail or form on your site can substantially increase the number of your visitors that subscribe to your publication.

Your pop up will draw your visitors' attention right to your e-zine, and if you offer your visitors free bonuses for subscribing to your e-zine such as free ebooks or free ads you can further increase the number of visitors who subscribe to your publication.

3. Offer free e-mail workshops (e-mail courses) to your visitors.

Making e-mail workshops will enable you to effectively promote one or several affiliate programs that offer products that relate to the subject of your workshop.

Many affiliate programs provide their affiliates with articles to post on their sites or run in their e-zines which you can use to successfully form the different parts of your workshop.

If you already write articles, you can easily use your own articles to form the different parts of your workshop and transform your articles into yet another powerful marketing tool.

To get the most out of your e-mail workshops, offer your workshops both on your site and by using a pop up, and use your workshops to increase subscriptions to your e-zine as well as repeat visitors your website.

4. Publish your articles on your site.

Posting your articles on your site is a great way to continually add content to your site and draw more repeat visitors.

To successfully use your articles to promote affiliate programs offer a free e-mail workshop in your resource box or use your resource box to promote your e-zine.

This will provide you with an effective way to successfully follow up with your prospects when your articles get published as well as when your visitors read your articles.

5. Offer free ebooks on your site.

Many affiliate programs provide their affiliates with ebooks they can rebrand with their unique affiliate URL and these can be used as an effective marketing tool.

The best way to promote your affiliate programs with ebooks, however, is to make your own ebooks.

If you write your own articles, you can create a unique promotional item by making an ebook compilation of your articles with links to affiliate programs you promote.

You can also create a best of compilation of your e-zine's top issues to drive more subscriptions to your publication or if you make e-mail workshops you can transform these into your ebooks content.

To further increase your profits, offer your ebooks as a free bonus or part of a free bonus for subscribing to your e-zine, and/or allow your visitors to rebrand your ebook with a link to their own business, affiliate program or opportunity.

by: Ken Hill

Choosing an Affiliate Program

What should you consider when choosing an affiliate program? You need to think about two key things: what business are you in and what can the affiliate program provide to your customers.

No matter what business you are in, the largest investment you make will be customer acquisition. If you have your own product, and have acquired a base of satisfied customers, then single product affiliate programs could work very well for you.

However, if your business is acquiring customers for other businesses, that is, purely affiliate programs, then a better choice for you could be affiliate programs with multiple products or services. This will help you to capitalise on your investment in customer acquisition.

The key to choosing successfully is to ensure that the affiliate program offers products that meet the needs of your potential customers. Coupled with this is the need for the products to be high quality and for the supplier to provide excellent customer service. Remember, your credibility is on the line every time you refer someone to buy through your affiliate relationship.

Some of the other factors I consider when evaluating affiliate programs include:

+ Is the affiliate program a reputable business? You can check out a business you are considering a relationship with in variety of ways. Talk to the Better Business Bureau in your local area or a similar body. In addition, I find web sites that monitor affiliate programs to be worth looking at. The best I have found is Associate Programs http://www.AssociatePrograms.com. Allan Gardyne pulls no punches and tells it as it is.

+ Does the program enable you to share in the lifetime value of the customer? Great programs will give you commissions on all future purchases of the customers you introduce. This is where the real profits are. These types of programs, in effect, allow you to partner with the supplier.

+ Does the program reward you for introducing other affiliates? This type of program is commonly referred to as a two-tier program. Often your customer may become an affiliate also and you will be rewarded for this.

+ Is the supplier interested in your success as an affiliate? The top affiliate programs engage in a process of coaching or information sharing to help you succeed. Affiliates are provided with regular newsletters outlining what is working for successful affiliates and providing updates and details on new products.

+ Is the commission reasonable? Commission rates on commodity products such as books and CDs are low. This is because there is very little margin in the products due to competition. Look for products that have a commission rate of 15% or more that are not commodities - that way you will be better able to recoup your customer acquisition investment.

+ Are statistics provided? The higher the level of statistics provided, the better off you are. This will enable you to measure the success of your marketing efforts and to determine the best places to invest your marketing dollars. Insufficient statistics is a sign that the affiliate program is not sufficiently interested in your success.

+ Are new products being developed regularly? To get the full value from lifetime commissions, new products need to be introduced on a regular basis. Without this, lifetime commissions can be worthless. Also, look for consistent high quality in new products introduced.

+ How frequently are commissions paid? The more frequently commissions are paid, the better off you are. Good quality affiliate programs will pay you monthly. In some situations, commissions are not paid until a certain level is reached. If the program you are considering has this requirement, check how many sales need to be made before the level is reached.

+ Have you read the affiliate agreement? This is a key area that you should look at. Some affiliate agreements are totally in favour of the supplier. Others are more balanced. Some agreements restrict your ability to promote similar products from other suppliers. Most agreements have anti-spam provisions. Look for agreements that are fair and that do not stack everything against you as the affiliate.

While there are other factors that can be considered when choosing an affiliate program, following the suggestions above will help you to make superior business choices that will lead to long-term success.

by: Kevin Sinclair

What To Look For When Choosing Affiliate Programs

So you've decided you want to become an Internet Marketer, huh? Will you sell someone else's products or sell your own?

If you choose to sell someone else's products, how will you know what to look for? After all, this is a new venture for you.

Or maybe it's not. Maybe you have been trying out some affiliate programs which have not brought you any money, or, worse, have not paid you for the affiliate traffic you have sent them.
If you are the new person, or the person who is floundering in Internet Marketing, this article will offer you some simple tips for choosing an affiliate program.

This article doesn't cover getting traffic to your site, which is another huge piece of the puzzle, and will be covered in a later article, but let's just start with choosing affiliate programs.

#1. You should find affiliate programs that:
a) are relatively easy to set up (code is either created for you or easy to create)

b) will pay you well. This depends on your definition of what being paid well means, but generally, for most beginners, and some novices, if you can see yourself being able to make more than $250/month, the program is at least worth looking at

c) give you products which people actually use. There are lots of products in the market which will sell, but do you really want to be selling pet rocks? If you do, please don't take offense. Most legitimate affiliate advice sites won't feature affiliate programs that are exclusively selling something like 8-Track players and tapes. While there are probably collectors out there who would love an 8-track player and cassettes, the fact is that the market is done with 8-tracks. The point is, there should be a genuine need for, or interest in, what you are selling/reselling.

So you find a program which meets the above criteria. Now what? Do a Google search on the company. Find out what people are saying about them. You may have to dig a bit, but the combined experience of the professionals (and not-so-professionals) who develop and contribute to the Internet on a regular basis is, collectively, the best source of advice you will find on making money, or affiliate programs, anywhere.

If you want advice on some great affiliate programs, you can visit sites which have already reviewed the information about companies and present it to you in a straightforward way. If you are ready to find some great affiliate programs, then you will be able to find categories of affiliate programs on these sites, which will generally represent the type of products you would like to sell.

Search engines love content, and so do your site visitors. Content is one of the most important aspects of getting people to your web site, and helping them to see the value in what you're selling. You should strive to choose programs with products which are related to your web site.
In other words, if you have a site which features information about the Toyota Camry, you're going to be pretty hard pressed to be able to get your page content matched up so that you could sell, say... baby rattles.

Find affiliate programs which relate to what you already do, and then promote those products.
Finally, see if you can find someone to actually talk to (ok, email would be okay) who has received regular checks or payments from marketing products. We think that this is, perhaps, the most important part of any affiliate program, because the main reason you promote their products is to receive a check for your efforts.

So there you have it, some simple tips for choosing great affiliate programs! Hope this helps you to reach your income goals, and also helps you to develop a long-term plan for on and off-line financial and personal success.

by: Jonathan Kraft

7 Tips to Choosing a Successful Affiliate Program

When selecting an affiliate program to join you need to know how to choose a successful affiliate program.

Look in the wrong place and you might find a dud but look in the right place and you might be on to a winner.

Here are 7 tips to help you choose a successful affiliate program to join:

1. Look at associateprograms.com This is the ‘affiliate central' of affiliate programs. You can virtually guarantee to find a successful program here and you can choose from tons of subject areas.

2. Look at clickbank.com Nearly every product they have for sale has an affiliate program. Many of them are extremely good and most pay very high commissions. (some over 50%)

3. Affiliate resource sites usually offer their best affiliate programs. As affiliate resources sites are specialists in affiliate programs you can be pretty sure of choosing a successful affiliate program from them.

4. Look for affiliate programs that are offered through any ezines you receive. Chances are the ezine owner has an affiliate program and if they have a good ezine they probably will have a good affiliate program.

5. Think of things that ALWAYS sell. Like web site design, ebooks, music and travel. Stick to proven online sellers and the affiliate program will have a much greater chance of being successful.

6. Seek out articles on affiliate programs. There are many good writers out there who have been successful with affiliate programs. Try to find articles they have written to see what has worked for them.

7. Take courses. Many sites offer free online email courses for affiliates. Take some of these courses to learn more about what it takes to be a successful affiliate.

Affiliate programs are a great way to make money but one of the secrets to affiliate success is to choose the right program in the first place. Use these 7 tips to help you succeed.

How to make money with Affiliate Programs

Every day, thousands of would-be marketers scour the internet looking for any and every affiliate program, sign up, sit back and wait for the money to pour in and get frustrated just as fast when the bank balance still shows a big, fat ZERO!

There are tons of guru's floating around and even more eBooks and articles claiming to know the latest and greatest trick to make tons of money with no effort at all (oh and of course, unless you use their method then you will never, ever get anywhere in your online business and stay broke the rest of your life). We've all seen these before.

Let's get real for a moment. If you don't put any effort into your marketing and don't spread the word of whatever you are marketing, then you will get exactly that much out of your effort. Zero effort = Zero results!

I hope that's plain enough and now let's have a look at the sensible way to market your affiliate programs, so you can actually earn some of that Internet-Money-Pie (and it's yummy
too).

There are two types of affiliate programs generally. Those that pay you (1-tier) and those that pay you, plus they pay you a bonus for actions taken by visitors sent by other webmasters
you have referred (2-tier).

Let's think about that for a moment. What's the easier way to make money? You sell a bunch of products and get paid on that alone, or if you sell product and also introduce the affiliate program to a bunch of webmasters who in turn also sell and they earn a nice commission and you get a bonus every single time they sell something, just for having referred them to the affiliate program?

Ok, I know you probably just smacked your forhead and said 'Duh' quite loudly and think I am stating the plain and obvious.

If you can get others to do the same thing you are doing, by keeping in touch with them and helping them and duplicating your efforts, then of course it stands to reason that the bonus
you receive for referring the webmasters will generate potentially a large team of people making you money.

So, your first task is to find good, well-paying 2-tier affiliate programs. You can always use single tier programs as a back end sale or on other projects, don't get me wrong, they will still make you money, but right now, we want to get you started off on the right foot to your own internet income.

So, you've gone out and found a well-paying affiliate program, and you are ready to rumble and make money... Not So Fast!!!

How are you going to promote it? What is your plan of attack? That's another problem many marketers run into, they just run off and don't think before they act and that again results in a lot less return for all of your efforts.

Here's what I have done in the past and always do each time. Feel free to try this out and see the results for yourself.

After finding the affiliate program I want to promote, I check the resource material provided by the program. Sometimes, depending on how new the program is, I use their material to get things rolling but almost every time, I start to write some ads of my own, perhaps an article or even an ebook that I can use to promote the product and the affiliate program with. Some of those resources are available to readers of the eBusinessCornerNews newsletter if you are interested.

Another thing I do, after putting together all the marketing material I want to use is to check out the competion that's already in the market. I don't really care if there is competition, as a matter of fact, many times that is a good indicator that there is a good demand for the type of product I
am promoting. You can do this pretty easily by just going to a search engine and typing in keywords you associate with the product for example (there are a lot of additional ways to do
this that we discuss in our newsletter).

There are a ton of places you can advertise your product, and the marketing material you are using, such as article directories, free advertising forums or websites, you can even find a lot of ezines that allow you to place free classifieds and websites you can post your ad on, at no cost.

Another thing that is handy to have is a website of my own, where I can post my thoughts and comments (nothing sells better than your own, plain english comments and reviews) along with any other articles I can find that will help to draw visitors in and make the search engines list my site better.

Most of the time, I will take a few of my articles and turn them into a free ebook, or post the articles in article directories where other webmasters are permitted to reprint them in their own newsletter, provided they leave my resource box (see the bottom of this article for an example) in place. So now they are spreading the word for me, driving traffic on my behalf and generating orders too. But I like to help, as much as I like to earn money too, so here's what I do most of the time. When I find a good newsletter that I like then I touch base with that publisher and offer him the article, but I also tell him it's for a 2-tier affiliate program and if he would like, then he could use my article, if he either leaves my box in place or signs up under me and then I let him add his link into my box, so he can earn the bigger piece of the pie and I get the bonus commissions from his sales.

Now, why would I do that? Simple...

I do that, because there's a much better chance that he will send out my article sooner, rather than later because now he has the potential to earn money with it too.

Find a few publishers like that and you are well on your road to getting a nice piece of the pie and the great thing is that anytime you find a new affiliate program to promote and write a new article, you already have made contacts that you can send it to, so it gets easier every time and takes a lot less effort on your part.

Well, there you have the sensible way of making money with affiliate programs.
(Note: There are a lot of other methods available to market your affiliate program and earn money, but this is one of the best methods I have ever used.)

Here's to your success,
Xavier
P.s. Quit reading this article already and get out there and find yourself a good affiliate program and start making money. Now get moving...

by: Xavier Nelson

Choosing the Best Affiliate Program

Choosing the best affiliate program means that you are aware of what affiliate programs are and what their ultimate benefits and drawbacks are. To choose the best affiliate program, you will want to decide on one that has the most benefits with the least drawbacks. There are many affiliate programs available online, many of them which are not worth even reading about. Because of this fact, you will need to do your research, talk to other affiliate members, and be 100% sure about the type of affiliate program you are looking for. There are some really good programs available, you just need to be persistent, patient, and ask a lot of questions. The following suggestions will help you choose the best possible affiliate program for you.

* Commission
Of course, if you are joining an affiliate program you are doing so for the commissions. There are affiliate programs available online that offer great commissions to their affiliates in order to keep them active and working hard. Then there are other programs that do not pay well, do not keep up with referrals, and basically cheat the affiliate out of hard earned money. Make sure you know exactly what kind of program you are getting involved with and that you will make good money for your time and effort.

* Good Products
Another important aspect of the affiliate programs you are looking at are the products. You might see an affiliate program that has the equivalent of a mall with links to thousands of products. The thought might enter your head that more links equals more business, but in this scenario it is not necessarily true. Generally, the affiliate programs that recognize the most success sell one quality product that a large percentage of the population can use, need, afford, and will actually want. This is the best type of affiliate program to associate yourself with and what you should be looking for.

* Experience
Experience is also important when it comes to affiliate programs. You want to work for an affiliate program that is settled in the market, that knows how to handle the business it is involved in as well as its employees, and is concerned with treating workers fairly and rewarding them for hard work. An experienced affiliate program knows what works and what doesn’t, so don’t be tempted to sign up for a brand new affiliate program just because you want to be one of the first people to join... this might not work to your advantage. It is very important to always do your research before jumping in!

by: Michael Turner

The Fundamentals of Creating In

Affiliate programs uses a simple concept for you to create an income online: Earn commissions when you make a sale. You don't need to worry about the costs for setting up the business nor advertising. It costs zero! When we think of successful online businesses, websites such as: Amazon.com (biggest online bookstore), eBay.com (largest auction website), Yahoo.com (most well-known search engine) usually spring into mind. On the contrary, you probably have heard of dot-com companies turned dot-bombs. So you think, “How do I make money on the internet when I don’t have money to advertise like those big guys such as Amazon.com or Yahoo.com?”

… Well, you don’t need money to make money! There are several ways to make money through the internet, and one of them is through affiliate programs. Best of all, it costs nothing to sign up!

“What are affiliate programs? Isn’t it just another get-rich quick plot or some hocus-pocus that’s all a scam?”

Affiliate programs (also known as referral/associate programs) are legitimate and not get-rich-quick scams. It’s a simple concept: Earn commission for each sale you make. As a matter of fact, even big guys like Amazon.com launched affiliate programs to fuel their sales and to increase their brand, hence that further proves my point that affiliate programs aren’t scams.

How Affiliate Programs Work…

Using Amazon.com as an example, here’s an illustration on how affiliate programs work…

An affiliate (let’s call her ‘Lily’) owns a website about movie-making, so she chose a few books related to her website including the best-seller “How to Write a Hollywood Movie Script in 5 minutes!”

Lily then puts unique links to each of these books on her website that enables Amazon to identify the visitor she sends. One of Lily’s visitors was so impressed by Lily’s review on the book “How to Write a Hollywood Movie Script in 5 minutes!” that she wanted to buy it immediately, the visitor then saw “Buy it now on Amazon.com!”…. CLICK!

The visitor enters the Amazon site, Amazon identifies this visitor is from Lily. The visitor then checks out with the book and pays using credit card. Lily is paid a commission on that sale!

Affiliate Programs vs. Selling Your Own Products on the Web

Sure enough as a web merchant, you get 100% of the profits made. But you will have to fuss with start-up costs, advertising, marketing, shipping, credit-card processing, products/ services to maintain, customer services, customer complaints, web hosting, accounting, staff training…

Phew! That’s a lot work! But…

As an affiliate, you don’t need your own products to sell; you don’t need to incur the costs: Your start-up cost is zero; and you don’t have to deal with the customers’ orders or accounting or all the above because the merchant will handle all these for you. In some affiliate programs, you can also recruit and train sub-affiliates under you. Your training pays off when your sub-affiliate gets a sale, because you earn ‘training commission’ too. I’ll get more in-depth about this later in the article.

“But I’m not a computer or internet-savvy person! I don’t have a website too!”

Don’t worry! An effective affiliate finds thousands of ideas to sell online, or offline! You can advertise locally in newspapers, in articles you write, recommend it to friends, notice boards, etc… There are no limits.

“Great! How do I start?”

As easy as it sounds, I’m sad to say that it’s not a piece of cake if you plan to sit there and wait for the cash to come to you. In the affiliate business, it follows the 80-20 rule – 80% of the benefit is only achieved by 20% of the affiliates. So if you want to get rich quick, affiliate program isn’t for you… but if you want to be one of the 20% affiliates who get 80% of the benefit… read on.

First of all, ask yourself why you want to start an affiliate business on the internet…

“Um… to earn some cash and buy things I want”

No, I want you to be as specific as possible…

For example, “I want to increase my income so that I can afford a sports car and have the ultimate sense of pride when I drive into the yard of my friends who said that I will never succeed in making money on the internet! I want my friends to be envious; I want to prove them wrong!”

When you know what you want and the more specific you get, the stronger your commitment, determination and persistence to succeed will be.

I know it sounds really corny, but it is a simple rule that the 80% affiliates don’t follow!

Secondly, you must…

Choose a Good Affiliate Program

There are many affiliate programs out there but you need to focus on the ones that work for you. I suggest a few good criteria to look for in affiliate programs:

1) High-value products/services

When I said ‘value’, I don’t mean the price tag. Let’s say, you are an affiliate for 2 companies which are in similar industries, both offering 30% commission. One sells its product for $50 and the other for $150. So you think,

“Hmmm… When I make a sale, I get more commission from company no.2 ($45) than company no.1 ($15). Wow!”

Although it is simple logic, ask yourself this question first, “will I buy this $150 product when I know there are cheaper ones out there?”

Think like your customer, question yourself “Am I paying my money’s worth on this product?”, “Does the company offer great value for a dollar?”

If you answer ‘no’ for both these questions, you’ll know that the company will eventually die.

2) High Affiliate and Customer Support

One of the key areas to look for when choosing a good affiliate program is their support system. A company that values its customers and affiliates is a company that grows. The company must be able to provide as many resources for their affiliates to promote their products, e.g. training, newsletters, banners, free stuff, etc.

Furthermore, it should also listen to its customers’ suggestions, complaints and be able to keep their customers happy. Remember, happy customers mean long-lasting company as happy customers will spread the good word of the company and its products, which means there will be more business opportunities for you!

3) Team Sales

There are some affiliate programs that allow you to recruit sub-affiliates under you. When your sub-affiliates perform well, you are also rewarded with a ‘coaching’ commission for their sales because it is your duty as a team leader to coach your sub-affiliates. Although most affiliate programs on the internet doesn’t support team-building, it is preferable that you choose one that does. The reason is simply:

T.E.A.M = Together Everyone Achieves More

Sure enough, you can do the whole affiliate business by being a lone ranger, but you are limiting your own capacity to earn more. Moreover, the results are two-fold: you will enjoy a second stream of income (unless you plan to do it full-time) AND the satisfactions of helping others to earn another source of income too!

4) Repeat Sales Potential

Other than achieving one-time sales, it is recommended if the affiliate program entitles you to lifetime customers, which means ‘once your customer, always your customer!’

A company with a good sales structure will retain their customers and encourage repeat sales. Thus, you get commissions for repeat sales too.

5) Reputable and Reliable Company

Check the company’s history on the newsgroup or http://groups.google.com, and find out whether it’s well-established. Are their customers satisfied? Are the affiliates happy? Does the company keep changing the affiliate policy? I’m sure no one wants their affiliate business suddenly gone because the merchant company failed!

An Ideal Affiliate Program

A great example of a company that meets all the criteria listed above is:

Sitesell Company

http://www.sitesell.com/ff.html

Their affiliate program, 5 Pillar Club, was named ‘The best affiliate program on the net’ by affiliatesdirectory.com, a web directory that tracks thousands of affiliate programs on the net.

Furthermore the top affiliate guru, Allan Gardyne, ranked it as one of the top affiliate program in his website, associateprograms.com

Lastly, Open Your Mind to Creative Ideas

Read as many articles/books as possible on the subject of selling or marketing to expand your mind to accept more ideas and concepts on how to sell! There are a lot of information on the internet to help you in your affiliate business, it costs zero to invest in your greatest asset… you. (Note: It’s not ‘your brain’ because you need your arms and legs to put your thoughts into action! ;D )

I hope you enjoy building your own affiliate business as much as I do. I wish you success in your journey!

by: Wei-Ni Chong

Affiliate Programs : Golden Opportunity or Waste of Time?

Now that the idea of doing business over the internet has been firmly established, many potential internet businessmen are searching for the best way to do business. Usually the choice comes down to whether you want to set up your own business and online store, or sign up for an affiliate program.

First of all, let's define what we mean by an affiliate program. An affiliate program is basically an internet business set up by someone else. They could be selling physical goods, education, information or any other products that can be sold online. By signing up as their affiliate, you are helping them promote their business or store. In return, they will pay you a commission for each sale you bring them. The amount of commission varies between different affiliate programs. Examples of affiliate programs include Amazon.com and Wordtracker, which you can visit at:

http://www.onlinebiz-help.com/links/wordtracker.html

1) EARNINGS

So how does an affiliate program differ from starting your own online store? Let's start by looking at the potential earnings. (After all, the main reason everyone wants to start an internet business is for the money). When you sign up for an affiliate program, you will be paid a commission for each sale you refer to the online store. This commission can range from 5% to 15% for physical products, and possibly up to 50% or more for virtual products such as subscriptions and ebooks.

On the other hand, if you start your own store, your profit can be much higher. For virtual products, your profit can be 100% of your selling price. After all, once the newsletter or ebook is created, you do not need to spend any more effort. When someone buys your ebook, they just download it from your website. If you are selling a physical product, your profit depends on whether you are manufacturing the product yourself, or buying from a wholesaler or dropshipping company. Your profit in this case could easily be more than 40% or 50%.

So, if you only consider the potential earnings, starting your own business is more lucrative than joining an affiliate program.

2) LOGISTICS

However, money isn't everything (Or so they say). When you are starting your own internet business, there are a number of logistic issues you need to look at. Here are a few things you would need to take care of:

a) Create your website
b) Design your product (if you are selling new products)
c) Create your product (if you are selling new physical products, or any virtual products)
d) Set up an online store
e) Set up a merchant account or payment gateway
f) Set up a warehouse or storage space (if you are selling physical products)
g) Have procedures and staff ready to fulfill orders
h) Set up an affiliate program to get others to market the products for you
i) Monitor for fraud
j) Monitor stock levels

As they say, "No pain, no gain". Having your own store pays very well, but requires a substantial time investment from you.

On the other hand, if you sign up for an affiliate program, all you need to do is set up a website to promote the program. All the ads, banners, marketing text etc will be provided to you by the affiliate program. Your only responsibilities would be to get people to visit your website, and hopefully click on the affiliate links to buy the products that you are promoting.

3) CONVERSION

Whether you have your own business or are promoting an affiliate program, the bottom line is the conversion rate, or the percentage of visitors that actually buy something from you. A number of factors influence this conversion rate. Factors as quality of the product, quality of the website, customer support are all important. However, I personally believe that the most important factor is trust.

When a potential customer arrives at your website, he will need to trust your site enough for him to be willing to buy from you. After all, on the internet you are just a faceless salesman. He doesn't know who is actually running the site and whether he will actually get the goods that he orders.

Having said that, one of the key methods of garnering trust is by recommendation and referral. If a store is being referred to or recommended by another website, the potential customer will feel that the store is trustworthy. After all, if the store is not trustworthy, why would the other website recommend it?

This is where affiliate programs shine. When you refer a potential customer to the store for which you are an affiliate, the customer will feel more relieved, since the store is being recommended by your site, a 3rd party. The customer will be more likely to buy from the store, benefiting both the store, and you as well.

There are both pros and cons to joining an affiliate program. You might earn less with an affiliate program compared to starting your own store, but I believe the benefits of not having to be responsible for the logistics makes affiliate programs are very viable "passive" source of income.

by: Steven O. Ng

5 Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing An Affiliate Program

When people decide to join an affiliate program to make extra money, or to have a full time job, they often do so with illusions and no idea of how the affiliate program actually works. Read the following top 5 mistakes people make when it comes to choosing an affiliate program and avoid these mistakes at all costs. Then, you will be able to be more effective and make more money for your time, so it is definitely worthwhile to read these warnings and avoid them.

#1 Don’t Compete, Support
Too many affiliate programs compete against their competitors which wastes money and puts affiliates out of business. However, if you are part of an affiliate program the more affiliates the better for getting more information and more money. One of the worst things to do is choose an affiliate program that believes in competing against other affiliates. Instead, choose an affiliate program that agrees with supporting and growing other affiliates to have a larger network and access to more affiliates.

#2 Little Reward
Another mistake people frequently make when choosing affiliate programs is choosing a program that offers little reward for the individual’s hard work. Too many affiliate programs pay too little and as a result affiliates find it difficult to make the money they should be making. Look for an affiliate program that has a good pay rate for your work.

#3 Old Statistics, if Any
You want an affiliate program that offers good, solid, real time statistics, not old statistics or ones that are no longer valid. There are not many affiliate programs out there that provide the kind of statistics an affiliate manager needs, but do your best to find an affiliate program that offers the most.

#4 No Support
Too often affiliates find themselves waiting days for an answer to an e-mail and an important question for their business. You want an affiliate program that guarantees you support round the clock if possible or at least within 24 hours. If not, keep looking for an affiliate program that wants to help you help yourself.

#5 Fresh Ideas, Creatives
Many affiliate programs provide few ideas or creatives to their affiliates and so thousands of web pages end up with the same advertising. However, affiliate programs would have a better success rate if many different ads were made available so affiliates could alternate ads and place different ads on different sites, depending on the products sold.

Commit these five mistakes to memory so you know exactly what you are looking for in an affiliate program, as well as what to avoid. You will be much more successful and happier as well if you do not get caught in these traps!

by: Michael Turner

Working With Affiliate Programs

Everywhere you look you see affiliate program offers for every product or service that you can think of. Some have fully automated systems that sell high volumes of hard products all over the world. In case you don't know, "hard" products are those that you can touch...unlike an ebook or downloadable web template. Many affiliate programs have several thousand affiliates and one or two of the bigger companies have over one million affiliates.

What are the advantages of joining an affiliate program?

They provide a ready-made business. This is a very big plus for those people who want to earn some kind of living off the Internet but lack the knowledge or inclination to set up a business by themselves.

Commissions and rewards are generally good, and the more established programs offer a real chance of advancement to higher and better-paid levels.

Other affiliates are usually on hand to offer practical support.

What are the limitations?

You are restricted in your promotional activities due to the fact that you do not actually own the affiliate site they give you. You won't be able to put such things as banners, images, links, meta tags, etc. onto your page.
The URL of your affiliate page is often either too long or contains such awkward things as question marks, which many Search Engines will not index.

Any promotional ads or articles have probably already been used by thousands of other people and consequently may have lost its impact, making it more difficult to achieve sales or referrals.

If the program you have joined has not yet established itself (or in some cases even if it has), then you may
encounter problems with payments owed to you not being honored. You also run the risk of low quality products or sub-standard statistics that do not accurately record how many referrals or sales you have made.

You may be required to purchase a minimum quantity of the product on a regular basis before you start to qualify for commissions or even before you can become an affiliate. You may not get the technical or affiliate support you might expect from the company. This may be due to inadequate staffing, or the company's negligence.

Other people in your downline do nothing to promote the program.

At least four of the above limitations can be overcome with a little time and effort. You could, for example, come up with fresher ads to promote the program (provided this is allowed).

If the company supplies the email addresses of people in your downline, then you could offer to help the less active members. Very often these people are passive not because they are lazy or apathetic but merely because they don't know HOW to promote effectively! your guidance could mean the difference between no sales or referrals and healthy downlines and residual incomes.

As regards promoting your actual page, here are a couple of little tricks that should overcome a number of
restrictions:

Cloak your Affiliate URL to stop hijackers Affiliate Masker While this will not help you to get listed on the major Search Engines, it will make your web page easier for prospects to remember and type into their browser's address bar.

Go to your affiliate page. Place your mouse pointer anywhere on the page and right click once. In the drop-down box choose "View Source". This will display the HTML for the page. Save this to your hard drive as a HTML document using the "Save As" function. Upload the page to your web site. If you don't have a web site then get some free web space from one of these:

http://www.tripod.com/
http://www.fortunecity.com/
http://www.hypermart.net/index.gsp
http://www.coolchat.com/
http://www.crosswinds.net/
http://www.htmlpublishing.com/
http://www.freehomepages.com/
http://www.pageproducer.com/

Submit your 'new' page to the Search Engines. You are also now able to place banner codes, links, images, testimonials, in fact anything you want onto these pages, because you are in control of the HTML. A word of caution, though. Don't change the actual HTML of your original affiliate page. Just put the other stuff, like banners etc, around it.

You have permission to publish this article in your ezine or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the byline is included and the article is included in it's entirety. I also ask that you activate any html links found in the article and in the byline.

You may not use this article in any publication that is not-optin (spam). A courtesy copy of the publication or link to the website you use my article on would be appreciated.

by Jude Wright