This article is for anyone who is currently marketing, or considering joining, an affiliate program. Whether it will be a big part of your site or just an "add-on" to generate some extra profits, this will undoubtedly help your bottom line profits.
Over the years I've tried my hand at quite a few programs. I've cashed monthly checks ranging from $2 to $2,500. As you can see, I've experienced some miserable failures as well as some still-growing successes. So please -- learn from my experiences!
You must pick the right program. When I was a newbie back in 1996, I was looking for ways to make money on the Internet. I realized my own product was a big key and worked on it feverishly. But I figured I would also try my hand at reselling.
After a little research I found a program called FreedomStarr which was a new network marketing program at the time. It seemed to have everything I was looking for. They would set up a free web site for me and pay me on six levels. All I had to do was sign up others and as they changed their long distance carrier I would earn a percentage of their phone bills. The nifty calculator at their site even told me how rich I could get.
So did it work? Long story, short ... NO! And believe me, I tried. I had their banners up at my site for two years. My organization reached 1000 members. Paydirt, right?
Wrong. My biggest commission check was $40.62.
Why? Simple. They paid 5% on level 1 and 1% or less on the rest. Just not enough to make serious money within a reasonable period of time. Plus, not everyone who joined ended up switching their long distance. That was a big secret I learned too late.
I'm not bashing network marketing and I know that there are some good programs out there. You may go through a handful before you find one, but bashing the network marketing industry is not the answer. The real solution is for you to find the right company through careful research. In order to make some REAL money with affiliate programs, you must:
1. Select an affiliate program from a well-known and established company.
2. Make sure their program pays you 25% or more on your personal sales.
And, one more thing that is extremely helpful in securing long-term affiliate profits is to select a program that pays residual or recurring commissions. (For example, monthly or yearly web services like hosting or autoresponders are perfect.) If there is an additional tier where you can earn additional income from your "sub-resellers," all the better.
Before you join that next affiliate program, or spend too much marketing the one you're in, plug it into that checklist of components. Once you are 100% sure that you have selected the right company to promote, next comes your actual promotion.
There are many ways to promote an associate or affiliate program. Most of the good programs offer training materials and affiliate support. While I recommend you pay attention to what they have to say, don't put on blinders and do ONLY what they say.
The best resellers with any program, whether it is an multilevel marketing program or a straight commission plan, are the creative people. You should utilize the material they offer, but you really need to take it a step further. Remember, you should only be promoting a product or service if you can get behind it 100% so use that confidence to take the extra step!
Here's an example of one of my successful programs:
Since the beginning of 1998 I've been reselling web hosting services for a company named Virtualis. You may have heard of them. They have carved out a reputation on the web as one of the most responsive and helpful web hosting firms.
In a market crowded with mom-and-pop hosting companies, this is a major advantage. Their hosting prices are not the lowest, but I can sell them because serious marketers know the importance of a super-responsive and reliable host. They passed all the checklist items above and it was a perfect tie-in for what I was marketing.
The very first month I joined I set up my little marketing machine. For example, I took a few hours and wrote an article on the web hosting industry. In it I explained the importance of professional level hosting as well as my own experiences with "budget hosts." I stuck the article on my site and included my reseller link. This started my flow of leads.
Then I took my plan a step further. Because this was a two-tier program I could sign up others into the opportunity and earn 10% of their sales too. I wrote a "welcome" message for all of my sub-resellers which invited them to reprint the same article on their sites as well, using their affiliate URL. It helped them get started and gave them a better shot at making sales.
Has this little plan I devised and set up in less than a day worked? Absolutely.
The first year brought me over $17,000 in commissions. Not a bad "side income." And no, it is NOT simply because I get a decent amount of traffic to my web site. My traffic levels were not much higher than the end of my FreedomStarr days. This new program worked because it was solid and I marketed it creatively.
To this day my commissions from this program continue to grow by $200 every month. In just a few more years I'll be cashing $10,000 checks every month. And please, don't misunderstand and think I'm telling you this to brag. I'm merely sharing this with you to show you that selecting the right program and marketing it creatively can make all the difference in the world.
So, here are the keys to promoting your affiliate program:
1. Promote the product or service through your own web site instead of relying solely on your reseller ID, self-replicating web page, etc. Prospects tend to buy more when linked from a web site they trust, rather than clicking on an obvious reseller URL.
2. If your site is not related to the affiliate product you plan to market, get a separate domain name and put a site up that is. If you're not willing to do that then you may be disappointed at how untargeted traffic affects your affiliate sales.
3. Don't rely on the banners they give you. Everyone else in the program is using them too! Write personal recommendations instead and pop them up in small, brightly colored tables at your site. These are more eye-catching and effective than any banner.
4. If the program has two-tier set-up, help your sub-affiliates succeed. Although I don't recommend you spend as much effort signing up sub-affiliates as actually selling the product, the affiliates that you DO sign up will benefit from your marketing plan too. Share it with them. By helping them you help yourself.
You now have all the details on how to succeed and how to fail at affiliate programs. Once you're set up, all you need is web site traffic and the rest will fall into place.
Why reinvent the wheel -- wasting time, effort and money going at it alone -- when a bunch of highly successful webmasters and marketers have SPILLED THE BEANS at a new Private Web Site? Learn our secrets and especially from our mistakes, and you'll have more time to actually grow your business! Go there now ...
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