Sure there are affiliate marketers that can sell anything, but that's not you...try the method we recommend. And please, don't expect to paste a bunch of banners onto your site and watch the cash rolling in. You need to provide quality information on these products.
An Example:
You have a website about babies and you have written some information on how to treat diaper rash.
Give them quality non-commercial information: Give the baby some exposure to air, switch from disposable to cloth diapers, etc.
Then be sure to recommend a product (perhaps some excellent diaper rash cream) that could further help remedy the problem.
The point is, don't just make a sales pitch...your visitors want information...give it to them. You will build their trust and they will return for more information.
Step 1: Look for the Affiliate Program
Again, your very first step should be to go to a website that sells a product that you have tried and can honestly recommend. See if that company offers an affiliate program.
Check the big "department store" websites based on your theme. They will likely have an affiliate program and a variety of products. For example, if you have a fitness-themed website, a company like Fitness Depot will have an affiliate program. But do note, these large store commissions tend to be in the 10% or lower range. You may find higher commissions if you go straight to the source of the products.
You can also visit some affiliate networks and search for the theme you are looking for. Here's a few of those companies:
> Click Bank: Sell ebooks, software and other information products with great commissions.
> Amazon (a good place to find a wide variety of products, but you're commissions will likely average out to only 5% of the sales)
> Affiliate Fuel - Lots of good pay per lead and pay per sale programs
> LinkShare - All kinds of products and services
> ClixGalore - All kinds of products and services
Step 2: Analyze the Affiliate Program Offerings
What is the commission? Do you receive commissions from repeat sales of your "customers"? Can you earn commissions from affiliates that you refer to the company?
Make sure it is worth your while to promote these programs and that they make it easy for you to check your click-through and sales statistics.
Step 3: Analyze the Website Offering the Affiliate Program
If you are familiar with the company and product, you may want to promote regardless of how many sales you can potentially make. If you are not as familiar, check the following:
Read the "About" page on their website to see how long they've been in business and perhaps find some sales information. If you can't find this information, you can always ask.
Go to Alexa.com and type in the website into the search box (i.e. domainname.com). Here, you will find out the traffic ranking of the website and you can read reviews, if any have been listed. The ranking will you give you a general idea of how busy a website is and may be an indication of how well they sell their own product.
Type in the product name + "product review" in your favorite search engine and see what others are saying about the product.
Also, type in the company name + "review" to see what appears.
While you're at your favorite search engine, type in "link:domainname.com" and you can see who else links to this website. This may give you information on their business associates, opinions on the company and information about who their affiliates are.
Do your homework. You don't want to promote a poor product or a company with a tarnished reputation.
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Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program Mistakes
Affiliate Managers: Your Top Five Biggest Affiliate Program MistakesIn this article I will show affiliate managers the mistakes they should avoid if they want to build a successful affiliate program.
I felt compelled to write this article after seeing the same mistakes made by most of the hundreds of affiliate programs I have joined since I started promoting them in 1997. I have made a nice living from affiliate programs over the years, so I know a thing or two about them. I would dearly love to make more money with affiliate programs, but affiliate managers don't make it easy for us affiliates. So hopefully this article will do a bit for the cause.
Here are my top five biggest affiliate program mistakes that I find today:
1. Competing With Your Affiliates.
This is by far the worst mistake made by companies that offer affiliate programs. I often see companies for products I am trying to promote compete with me in the search engine rankings and pay per click advertising programs.
Why companies invest money and resources in competing with their affiliates is beyond me. By competing with me, you're trying to put me out of business. Have marketing directors ever thought of it in that way? Because if you succeed, you will no longer have an affiliate network to speak of.
The money would be better spent on supporting your affiliate network by creating a better product, providing more referral statistics, higher commission payouts, faster support, and more, fresh promotional creatives.
So if you're an affiliate manager reading this article, tell your affiliate director at your next meeting to STOP competing with your affiliates, and support them instead!
2. Not Providing Your Affiliates With Useful, Real-Time Statistics.
All marketers rely on statistics to measure the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Yet most affiliate programs only provide their affiliates with basic statistics such as number of visitors sent, number of sales, and commission earned. These statistics aren't much help to affiliates who want to measure the effectiveness of a particular pay per click campaign.
Affiliate managers - please consider providing these useful statistics so that I can market your products effectively:
Archive of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly statistics and by date range.
Commission earned, broken down by product or service, and how the customer was referred to the site.
Daily email update of all affiliate statistics.
Instant email notification of a new affiliate.
Instant email notification of a new free trial sign up.
Instant email notification of a new sale and all relevant statistics. I love getting new sales notification emails!
Number of free trial downloads or subscriptions.
Number of returns and all relevant statistics.
Affiliate links with trackable IDs, so that affiliates can tell exactly which site, or ad campaign is sending the referrals and sales.
Unique clicks - which refers to the unique number of visitors referred - in addition to raw clicks - which refers to the total number of click throughs.
A list of top performing affiliate statistics, so that affiliates can compare how they're doing and which areas they can improve on.
Include the most important statistics at the top of the email and subject line. There's nothing worse than having to scroll down to see what the referral purchased or how much commission I have made.
The following only apply if the affiliate program offers more than one level of commissions.
Commission earned as a result of referrals sent by 2nd-tier affiliates.
Commission earned, broken down by commission level.
Number of 2nd-tier affiliates referred.
I've been promoting products and services via affiliate programs since 1997 and I have yet to come across an affiliate program that provides anything close to these statistics.
3. Not Compensating Your Affiliates Fairly For Their Hard Work.
The #1 incentive for any affiliate is cold hard cash. Money sells! So tell your marketing director to fire the search engine optimization firm and advertising department, and redirect the resources to paying your affiliates a higher commission rate.
Another thing I hate is seeing my commissions go down the drain because someone I had referred signs up to the affiliate program and purchases the product via their affiliate link. It almost feels like I'm being robbed blind! I highly recommend affiliate managers deter this practice by making it harder for affiliates to pocket the commission from their own purchases, at least the initial one.
4. Not Providing Enough Fresh Promotional Creatives.
Most affiliate managers seem to give their promotional creatives little thought. All they offer is a handful of 468x60 banners, buttons and text links. What happens is that affiliates end up using the same ads on hundreds, even thousands of web sites.
Affiliate managers - what about these promotional creatives?
Articles and tips with embedded affiliate links
Classified ads
Customer testimonials
Direct email ads
Email signatures
Newsletter ads
pay per click ads
Pop-up/under ads
Product photographs
Product reviews
Product screenshots
Rich-media ads
Skyscrapers
Staff interviews
Listen up! Different ads perform better on different sites. And ads generally have a life span of a carton of milk. So offer your affiliates a greater variety of ads, more often.
5. Not Providing Fast, Quality Support For Your Affiliates.
This is the 21st century. Don't make your affiliates wait longer for an email reply than it takes to send a letter by snail-mail post.
Don't outsource your affiliate support work. If you have to, then at least train your support staff so that they understand the ins and outs of your products and affiliate program. I'm often dumbfounded by affiliate support staff who can't give me answers to simple questions.
Well there you have it - my five biggest complaints about affiliate programs today. I hope affiliate managers take note and take strides to better support their affiliates, because if you don't, affiliates will find other ways to make money on their site.
Affiliate marketers - if you agree with what I've said, send this article to your affiliate program managers!
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