Fortune-Magnet News

by: John Benjamin (ProMinds Inc)

“20% of your sales force produces 80% of your company revenues” - Vilfredo Pareto, Economist.

This is one rule that definitely rules the world of Affiliate marketing. While a company may boast of a high volume of affiliate base it enjoys, the fact lies that only 20% of that base are the actual driving force for the sales of that company.

Leaving that cliched statement, lets talk about the more obvious question which is, Why does it hold true and more relevant for affiliate marketing.

The answer to that lies in the fact that most companies always tread the usual road and well, slowly dissolve into the already burgeoning pit of companies that are into affiliate marketing.

How often have you seen a company that is proactively involved in the affiliate marketing promotions? Not many right?

One major mistake made by most companies, rather almost every other company is that they do not experiment with new ideas. True affiliate marketing is a vast subject and at some point the company does lose its focus once the affiliate base starts to build up.

A few suggestions for companies that are into affiliate marketing.

1. Eliminate the 80:20 Rule

Lets take an example of a company that would want to launch its affiliate marketing program. The usual way is to do an e-mail campaign coupled with some CPM deals on portals. The end result of this exercise would be to just increase the affiliate base. While the above 2 exercises would be a good way to begin the program, it does point to one gaping loophole. It opens the doors to 80% of junk. By junk, I mean to say sites/webmasters who sign up just for the kick of it. They promote the product with enthusiasm initially and later it dies down.

To eliminate the 80:20 rule, companies should focus on building a niche market rather than concentrate on increasing its reach to more affiliates. To begin with, proper research needs to be done with regards to the really good quality sites. These sites are the ones which enjoys a good viewership, good hits, a loyal and a targeted customer base.

When a company focuses on sites and has a proactive approach, what they can discover is an entirely different market which is more focused and sales driven. These sites could vary from portals, information sites to personal web pages. Although the downside in this is that you would not be able to see a great increase in your affiliate base. The advantage though is that you just get a step closer to a better balanced ratio of sales versus total workforce.

2. Personalization from the beginning

I have a question to ask you. Except for the top 50 or 100 performing affiliates, how often would a company contact its other affiliates. I am not talking about “Personalized Auto Generated E-Mails,” but a mail that is drafted by a person from the other end? By keep in touch with the affiliates the company can learn a lot and also help the affiliate generate business. Word of mouth marketing is cost effective and can produce amazing results.

3. The psyche of an affiliate

Most companies write of affiliates who do not generate any sales in the first quarter of signing up. This is a dead situation as both the parties would have lost interested. However, a little retrospection into this will show something else. Most affiliates who sign up do not know the technical details for setting up the banners, etc. Instead of having a generic FAQ page, customization is the keyword here.

Companies will need to monitor the affiliate’s path on the site and contact them accordingly. For example a person who signs up as an affiliate and then logs into the system, clicks on the banner links and then logs off. If this happens way too often, (and I’m talking of not more than 2 times) there is something seriously wrong. If a company can take this opportunity and provide support to the affiliate, trust me, you have one person who is going to be all praise for you.

4. Custom deals

Another most common fact is that companies provide custom commissions only to affiliates who bring in higher volumes of sales. While many people do know that a company would not limit itself to the commission type it displays on the site, the company also needs to approach the affiliate and negotiate a custom deal that will be appropriate for the affiliate. Most often it happens that companies tend to either overquote or underquote the deal. Perhaps a little more research into the market and the affiliate himself would provide a better insight.

About The Author:
John Benjamin at the time of writing, works for ProMinds Inc.

“A system of advertising in which site A agrees to feature buttons from site B, and site A gets a commission on any sales generated for site B. It can also be applied to situations in which an advertiser may be looking for marketing information, rather than a cash sale. Popular among startups with very small marketing budgets.”

This is what you get when you do a search in Google for the definition of Affiliate Marketing.

I still remember, my early days of induction into the world of Internet Marketing, more specifically “Affiliate Marketing.”

Till then, I was completely oblivious to this term. For most of us, Affiliate marketing is a term that has different meanings. Let me first move to the other side of the line and say that affiliate marketing is nothing but unnecessary pop ups, newsletter spam, affiliate tracking code cloaking and much more.

Now from the other side of the line, Affiliate Marketing is a way to market your products online by signing up affiliates who have websites and are willing to advertise your products on their site, in return earning a certain percentage of the commission from the sales they generate.

If you take a closer look, for one particular product or a company, you will find server loads of affiliates, marketing the company or a product. Now this is an indicator to itself of the way you market your products on the Internet.

To talk about Affiliate Marketing, this one article would not suffice. Hence, I have divided it into a series of articles. Although I am very tempted to first write about “The tools to improve an affiliate’s conversions” let me stick to the chronology.

Why does a company need an affiliate program?

Having defined, affiliate marketing, the next obvious question that arises is, why a company needs affiliates when it can market its products on its own.

To answer this, while a company may be very huge in terms of the infrastructure, or has a really successful product, it cannot sit silent and bank on its own strengths.
Further to this, a company cannot customize the look and feel of the site to suit the tastes of the local markets. Although there are tools where you can cloak your website, it would involve a lot of complexity in terms of the technical and marketing demands. Hence, arises the need for affiliates.

What makes a company look for affiliates?

Let’s face it. Every website which has a decent hit rate does enjoy a certain niche market. It is mostly for the smaller sites that you see a higher percentage of customer loyalty. There are various reasons to this; one most obvious factor is the service and the personalization provided by the smaller sites. It is sites like these which attract companies to negotiate them into signing up as an affiliate.

The mistakes most companies make:
In my experience, working with the affiliate program, one huge error made was that most companies which are into affiliate marketing just design the specs and set it up on their website and wait for webmasters to sign up with them.

Now you never know the kind of traffic you would be attracting. This where the 80:20 rule comes in the picture and that is how most of the companies strategize their affiliate marketing efforts.

A more detailed article about this can be found, entitled: “Eliminating the 80:20 rule”.

Do you think you are ready to sign up as an affiliate?

Perhaps, for most of us, this question never seem to arise because of the fact that the commissions offered to an affiliate is huge enough to blind us from the most basic and simple facts to begin with. Let’s face it, if a company offers you a huge commission for selling their products, you can rest assured that it will take you a lot of time and effort to make a single sale. I would not quote any numbers here as the commissions differ from one market sector product to another.

A few pointers to keep in mind before signing up as an affiliate:

1. Take stock of the situation. Or as the “Gurus” call it, make a SWOT analysis of your site. This will present your website in a very plain and subtle way. Through this you would know where your website’s strength lies in.

2. Scout for the right product for you. This is common sense, but let me reiterate this fact. Always sign up for products you think will fit in with your website’s theme. You would not want to be a web host and sign up as an affiliate, selling another web host who promises to give you a 50% commission. Now that would be very silly to do. The bottom line is that sign up for services that will “Add Value” to the services provided by your website.

3. The Affiliate Terms & Conditions. This is the saddest part of affiliate marketing. In my experience, I used to come across at least 2 cases of misunderstood affiliates who feel they are cheated out in the deal. Always ensure that you read the terms & conditions carefully and clarify with the company incase you have any further queries.

4. Prepare your site. Another major problem in affiliate marketing is tracking. Always ensure that you have some tools and logs to monitor the traffic on your site and if possible the outgoing links, clicks, etc. Let’s face it, no matter how big a company is, setting up the perfect affiliate tracking tools is something which I have not come across so far. So there will always be a situation where in you will have to lose out on a conversion. Make sure that you have your back covered with the tools so that your case will have credibility.

Remember, a company would never want to deny an affiliate, especially if the affiliate is really genuine. Why? I’m sure you know the reasons.

5. Affiliate Networks or Direct Affiliate? Now that you have all the details with you, the next question is whether to sign up with an affiliate network of to sign up directly as the company’s affiliate. There are a few things to consider here. I would not restrain you from signing up with either of the entities as both have their pros and cons.

a) If you are looking at a reasonably good tracking system and hassle free set up, then Affiliate Networks would be the right place for you.

b) If you are not quite sure of the products you want to sell, but you want to set up some affiliate banners, then affiliate networks is the best place to sign up.

c) If you think you can handle the terms & condition put forth by the company and if you are fairly adept in setting up a foolproof system on your site then sign up with the company directly. It will also help you negotiate a custom deal which will offer you much higher payouts as compared to signing up with networks.

Keep in mind that affiliate networks are nothing but sites just like yours who sign up as a master affiliate. By setting up their infrastructure, tracking, etc they allow various other people to sign up through them. What happens in this case is that the affiliate networks are the master affiliates, while you become the sub affiliate. So what this means is that the extra commission earned by the networks for the sales you bring, a part of it is used towards providing you with better service. And there are a few networks which also charge you a certain fee for the transactions.
But do not think that signing up directly will be a better deal. Because although this will provide you with direct interact with the company and in most cases, with the account manager, you will have to be 100% of your tracking and other problems that might arise.

So if you are ready to make some serious money and efforts towards marketing a product, then go ahead, there is no better way to do it than through affiliate marketing and no, I am not talking about Google AdSense here.

About The Author:
John Benjamin works as a freelance consultant for Internet Marketing. His website has various articles listed at http://www.promindsinc.com

Affiliate programs are probably the easiest and simplest way to achieve business success online. Indeed there are many online entrepreneurs from all over the world making a very comfortable income from various affiliate programs. Yet there are multitudes of people who will testify to trying a few and never coming anywhere near success. In this article we will look at the key factors that hinder success.

Most join affiliate schemes with the wrong attitude The Biggest problem that hinders most affiliates from making any money is the fact that most join affiliate programs with the wrong attitude. And most of the blame has to be taking by the hype peddlers who sell these schemes. They usually give the impression that little or no work is required to become a successful affiliate pulling in a six figure income. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The net has not changed the basic foundational facts of life. In this life there is nothing for nothing. There are no free lunches. To get anything worth having, there is a price to be paid. Actually most affiliate programs claim that joining is free, but this is not entirely true. There is the time you will need to spend on the program and at the beginning, as you learn the ropes, you will tend to spend loads of time. Time is priceless because we have a set number of hours in a day and we cannot buy more time. Therefore in my mind, a program charging $10 to join but where I will end up spending less time than another program which is free to join but extremely time consuming, is much cheaper. The time-consuming affiliate program that is free to join is in fact a lot more expensive.

One of the reasons why it makes all the difference to join a program that deals in an area of your interest or hobby is because you will hardly notice the extra hours and time you spend on the program. This means that putting in the extra hours of work that are required to get any affiliate program off the ground will be an almost effortless chore for you.

Good affiliate schemes have proven marketing methods and systems. Follow them. In the offline world franchises have always had a remarkable success rate and a very low failure rate. One reason is that every entrepreneur who purchases a franchise enjoys the turn-key aspects of the business which have been tried and tested over time and have already proved to be successful for others.

The same benefits are available for affiliates and yet many never take advantage of them. A good affiliate program will have an elaborate marketing method and system in place. New affiliates will usually learn about it by going through a short email course when they join. Even small details like the order in which affiliate banner ads are arranged is significant. The more successful banner ads will tend to appear first.

To make serious money from any affiliate scheme, you have to do a little more than what everybody else is doing Having worked hard with the affiliate marketing method, the next step is to look at how you can do more. Most other successful affiliates will already be using the proven marketing systems of the business. For you to be really successful you will need to do more than what the other successful affiliates are doing. Constantly test new and better ways of doing the same things and try totally new ideas. The right time to do this is when you have already mastered the laid down systems and procedures of the affiliate scheme to the extent where you are pulling in significant sales. This is the point where you may want to establish a blog or website to help you promote your affiliate program further. Any attempt to do all this earlier will almost certainly lead to failure because you will not even have understood what works for the particular affiliate program and what does not. By approaching affiliate marketing with these points in mind, your chances of success in any affiliate program will greatly multiply.

About The Author:
S. Rosendahl is a Technical Executive Writer for Website Source, Inc. http://www.websitesource.com. Her established writing skills coupled with experience in the website hosting industry have provided internet professionals with marketing, product and service ideas for many years.

If you have been longing to start a business online you may be coming across terms you’ve never heard before. You may also have found the opportunities available are overwhelming. Where do you begin?

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS - EASY START

Affiliate programs may be the easiest online business to start running. Why?

With any online business you must have a product or service to sell. First you must create this product or service and then you must be able to fill orders.

Selling your own product or service also means creating a website, learning how to write ad copy, setting up a marketing plan, being able to accept payments online and obviously doing the work. If you’re selling a physical product then you will need to make or buy the item, package it and pay for shipping costs. If you provide a service than you will likely have to start by doing free jobs to build your credibility and then when you are charging for your service you are still limited by how much work you can actually handle.

THE MAGIC OF AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Affiliate programs are a great way to get started in an online business. In fact there are even some ‘Super Affiliates’ who are making fabulous incomes from affiliate programs. So, what ARE affiliate programs?

Affiliate programs allow you to sell another company’s service or product and make a commission on every sale or lead. You do not even need to build a website or handle the transaction. Your job is to drive traffic (customers) to your affiliate link.

An affiliate link is a special URL code that will identify customers coming to the company’s site from your advertising. It will likely be the website address with a code attached to the end.

Some affiliate programs also have tiers. That means if someone who is interested in SELLING the product comes through your link and signs up you will also get a small percentage of THEIR earnings.

HOW DO I CHOOSE A PROGRAM?

You should research the popularity of some of your interests. Try to determine if people are buying that product or service online. There are many sources for finding that information including free ones such as the Overture keyword tool.

When you have found an area that is popular then type the subject along with ‘affiliate program’ into your search engine and see which programs have services or products for that area. You can also use an affiliate program directory.

When you have found a program that looks interesting you should read the terms of the program. Make sure that payouts are not based on a high commission earning or you may never see your money. Also try to choose programs with high commission rates. Often you will find ebooks and downloadable software has the highest rates as there is no physical product to make or ship. If you are satisfied with the terms then you need to sign up - usually a simple process.

START MARKETING

The reason affiliate programs are so great for beginners is that you only need to focus on marketing - not making - your product.

Many affiliate programs have information on how to market and give you tools such as banners, product feeds and more. You can also look for other information on marketing including writing articles, creating pay-per-click campaigns, commenting in online forums etc. As you gain experience marketing you will make adjustments to your selling and start creating a wonderful income!

About The Author:
Jeff Casmer will help you setup your very own money making website today that’s 100% ready to take orders and pull in MASSIVE PROFITS for you right now…GUARANTEED! Plus, you’ll get your own pre-written ezine-in-a-box customized and setup for you absolutely free WITHIN 24 HOURS!! Get started immediately at: http://www.24hourwealth.com

When a newbie begins an online business, the temptation can be high to join most any affiliate program they see in the hopes of making extra money. Given the amount of products and services that newbie get presented with, and since newbie have a burning desire to make money fast, it is easy to see how the online newbie can get lured into joining a lot of affiliate programs without knowing if they should join them or not.

For the newbie, the danger in joining lots of affiliate programs is multi-faceted. Joining affiliate programs takes time, time the newbie could be using defining their USP, learning about getting targeted traffic, or learning other Internet marketing skills that will actually generate revenue for them. In addition, the newbie who joins lots of affiliate programs in the hopes of making instant profits, is at risk of being disappointed when they don’t make money by joining the latest affiliate program and that leads to yet further “un productivity” and poor use of time.

So, what steps do newbie take to identify the best affiliate program(s) that matches their USP?

1) Define how the affiliate program’s offering complements your USP.

You should be able to clearly map out what the affiliate program’s offering (product or service) will be useful to patrons or visitors of your web site, list or customer base.

2) Make sure that you fully review the product offered by the affiliate program, use it, and make your own assessment of it.

Don’t promote a product from any affiliate program unless you own the product yourself and love it. If you own and love the product that you are promoting, you will be able to sell it more effectively because your energy and excitement level will show through in the deliver of your message to would be customer.

3) Make certain that the web site that sells the affiliate program is set up correctly to sell the product, and sell it well.

The web site that sells the product of the affiliate program should be professional in its layout, design, sales copy, and delivery of the product itself. The web site should have a mechanism to capture the names and emails of the visitors. The web site should also have a strong auto responder series in place to follow up with and sell the visitors of that site on the product.

4) Check to see if the affiliate program should be tracked with cookies so that the referring web site will get credit for each affiliate sale, even the sales that come as a result of the auto responder series.

If the affiliate program doesn’t use cookies to track referrals, do not sign up.

5) Pay Per Click Ads

Pay Per Click Ads are a very popular way of promoting affiliate programs. You bid on a keyword, use your text ad and pay the amount you have bid on when someone clicks on your ads. Overture is the most popular, but also one of the most expensive. Use your search engine to do a search to find a ppc that fits your budget.

6) Article Writing

Writing articles is a good way of advertising your affiliate programs for free. Write an article about something relevant to your business opportunity, and place your affiliate website url in the resource box at the end of your article. If the reader has enjoyed your article they may click on your link and you have a potential customer.

7) E-Zine Advertising

E-zine advertising is also a very good way of advertising your affiliate programs. Internet marketers with huge list will sell you space in their e-zine for you to advertise. Prices vary depending on the number of people subscribed to each person’s list. You can normally find marketers willing to sell you advertising space in ezine directories.

About The Author:
Webmaster of Hot Niche Keywords which you’ll receive 75-100’s of Niches Keyword Lists Every single Month. Visit Free Niche Marketing Tips now to for various niche marketing tips. You may subscribe to his 6 part Niche Marketing Course which will reveal the insider tips and tactics that will show you how to find Hot and Untapped Niche Markets with Ease.

I still remember thinking that promoting Affiliate Programs was a waste of time. Until I started making a small fortune.

At the end of 2004, I started some time exploring the concept of promoting affiliate programs through pay-per-click search engines. I knew of some Internet Marketing gurus who were claiming you could make thousands of dollars every month. But I was skeptical. I remember thinking, “I know what these guys are about. They just want to sell more books.”

But I decided that at least it was worth a look. The concept is quite simple. Choose a product – and one that has an affiliate program, of course. Set up an advertising campaign at a PPC search engine like Google and choose how much you want to pay per click. Write a three line advertisement and add your affiliate link. Whenever anyone clicks through your ad and buys the product, you earn a commission.

So I looked. And thought about it. And looked some more. I was still very uncertain about the whole concept, but I finally decided to test for myself whether it could really work. And since I knew I’d be spending quite a bit of money on advertising clicks, I felt it was well worth investing in a book so I could learn from more experienced marketers how to maximize the profitability of my campaigns.

As my business grew over several weeks I purchased and read several ebooks. By far the best I read was Chris Carpenter’s Google Cash ( http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq ). His approach is genuine, down-to-earth, and he explains very clearly how to build your own affiliate marketing business. And importantly, he makes a fortune doing what he explains in the book.

I started by testing 20-30 campaigns on various products. Most of them were unsuccessful, but I expected that from what I had been reading. I would test a product, and if it didn’t work, I would drop it quickly. The key with this business is identifying the affiliate products and campaigns that are successful. Once you find one that works, the money starts rolling in.

By February of 2005 I had identified several campaigns that were turning a profit. With one of these I was spending $0.08 per click to promote an affiliate product that pays me $18 commission on each sale. Approximately 1 visitor in 100 buys the product, so I make around $10 profit for every 100 visitors that I send.

What a formula! For every 1,000 visitors, that’s $180 in commissions. That might not seem like all that much, but remember once you have a successful campaign it keeps going all day, every day. If you send just 1,000 visitors to a program like this every day, then by the end of the month you will have earned $5,400 in commissions, of which $3,000 is profit.

Does it seem too simple? Well, if it was so easy everyone from your Aunt Mabel to the mailman would be doing it. In fact, while the concept is simple, getting your campaigns to run profitably does take some work. Since I can’t possibly teach you all you need to know in one article, I’ll give you a few tips here and recommend Google Cash for a detailed explanation:

Choose Your Product Wisely. The program should pay a commission of $15 or more, otherwise it won’t be worth paying for your clicks. And if the commission is very high, be careful. Some products like web hosting and satellite dish installations may pay commissions of $100, but you face intense competition from other affiliates, so the price you need to pay to get ad exposure and clicks will probably also be very high. Sometimes it is better to identify a niche product with less competition from other affiliates.

Track Your Campaigns Carefully. If you’re paying around 7 or 8 cents per click for a program that pays close to $20 commission, you need to make at least one sale for every 250 visitors.

If you send 300 to 400 visitors with no sale, consider dropping it.

Days Of The Week Do Matter. When testing campaigns keep in mind the day of the week and even the time of day. Some products sell better on Mondays through Fridays, during business hours. Others, like entertainment products, sell better in the evenings and on weekends.
Getting back to my own experience, after identifying several campaigns that ‘worked’, I spent some time fine-tuning them using techniques I read about in Google Cash. By the end of February I had earned $27,817 in commissions for the month, all on products I had never even heard of at the end of 2004. My profit was a neat $10,795.

It’s incredible really. I made this money without a web site. From home. Working an average of just an hour or two a day.

I’m finally making the amount of money online that I dreamed about.

How about you? Would you also like to build an affiliate marketing business? Could you use some additional income? I encourage you to proceed, but be smart about it. There are risks involved and you should be aware of them. You should read Chris Carpenter’s book. That way you’ll be on a fast track to more profitable campaigns. And his book will save you hundreds of dollars, easily, as you avoid some common mistakes and pitfalls. Good Marketing!

About The Author:
John McLaren has worked for many years selling IT consulting services. Now he works from home, just a few hours each day, building his highly successful affiliate marketing business. For more professional advice, he recommends the book, Google Cash, available at: http://tinyurl.com/6gdaq.

by: Jeremy Hansen

When I began affiliate marketing I knew only half of these things but, in hindsight, if I had have known these things then it would have made the decisions I made so much easier. Such is the intention of this article, to contribute towards the success of affiliate marketing newcomers. Here are 8 reasons to be an affiliate marketer.

In fact the only reason I wrote 8, is because there isn’t enough space to write the 100 that there really are. I hope you find them informative and helpful.

1. No product to produce.
Often creators of products (usually info) pay large fees to make or have their products made. With affiliate marketing forget about it.

2. No products to deliver.
If your promoting information products it’s a download page or if your selling physical product its shipping, handling and distribution. With Affiliate marketing you needn’t worry.

3. Copy the same method.
Once you discover a method of affiliate marketing that works you can reproduce it for any product. Then continue to do it until you have more money than you know what to do with.

4. High income potential.
The amount of money you make increases in proportion to the amount of time you put into your site. Once you have developed a format that you know converts your visitors to customers, all that you need to do is get as much traffic to the site as humanly possible. You can get into search engine optimization or simply work on your Pay Per Click strategies, but either way the harder you work the more you get paid.

5. Make passive income.
The king of them all: Money while you sleep. There’s nothing like waking up in the morning, checking your ClickBank account and finding sums of money that have accumulated while you’ve been lost in peaceful dreams. Enough said!

6. No customers to deal with.
Forget complaints, nasty people, changes in customer preference, forget it all. The merchant takes the responsibility and changes their site accordingly.

7. Low start up costs.
The only cost in setting up an affiliate website is that of registering your domain and host, then getting some traffic through. If you’re making your own products the costs can be significantly higher in amount and number.

8. No payment processing.
Forget refunds, taking details, names, addresses, emails, credit card numbers. Your merchant handles it all. All you do is sit back while the money gets put into your account. That simple!

About The Author:
Jeremy Hansen is an experienced affiliate marketer and entrepreneur who specializes not only in online business but in other forms of investment also. He runs a website on revolutionizing your personal finances through affiliate marketing that provides best FREE information from across the web on affiliate marketing and contains steps to ensure success for the new affiliate marketer. Check it out at http://www.revolutionizeyourlife.net/affiliatemarketing.htm

by: John Kovacs

People sign up with affiliate programs everyday, looking to expand their income and make a good living for their efforts. The unfortunate part of all this is that most people will sign up with a company without really knowing what the company is all about. In many cases, the majority of these people who sign up, never see the income they had hopes for. In too many situations they find themselves loosing interest and give up because they are greatly disappointed.

There are many factors that can play into this type of situation. The most common complaints are; lack of support and getting paid the proper commissions. With the many affiliate programs that are offered on the Internet, you need to be able to distinguish between a well-established affiliate program, verses one that is not.

Here are 12 tips on what to look for when selecting an affiliate program:

1.) Look for the length of time the company has been in business. Are they a legitimate company that is well established with a solid presence on the Internet?

2.) Do they offer a quality product or service? If they offer to pay you a high commission, but do not have a quality product or service, is it worth your time?

3.) Does the company stand behind their products or service offering a 100% guarantee?

4.) Do they offer all the promotional tools you will need, like banners, text links, ads, flyers, etc?

5.) Look for companies that provide you with training materials and marketing support to help you achieve success.

6.) Look for companies that will give you updates on new products or services, selling tips and training material.

7.) Does the company have a statistics/log page that you have access to? This page should show you your current sales, sign ups, commissions, etc. Look for programs that have real time tracking capabilities that you can access 24/7.

8.) Do they have an administrative page that you can make changes to your personal information?

9.) When a sale is made or an affiliate joins their program through your website, do they send you notification of this? What form of information do they send you? You should receive information on the type of sale, the name of the person, phone number and email address of your new sign-up. This is an important issue when you are in a two-tier affiliate program.

10.) Do they offer a fair commission structure? A reputable company will make it very clear what you are paid for your efforts. You should avoid any company that does not paint a clear picture of the commissions you receive. Most established companies offer 20% and up.

11.) Check on what form of tracking code they use. Are you paid only on the initial sale, or do you get paid on repeat business.

12.) Look for companies that are offering unique products or services that are relevant to your website. Choose merchants that offer products or services that you yourself believe in.

To summarize, signing up with a company that is well established can generate a stronger business partnership, which will increase your motivational interest as well as significantly increase your levels of success.

About The Author:
John Kovacs is the CEO and founder of “A Home Business Opportunity”. His website mainly focuses on supplying free marketing tips, resources and support for home startup businesses and Internet marketing. To get a step-by-step guide in building an online business, visit http://www.ahomebusinessopportunity.net

by: S. Housley

Affiliate programs are commonly misunderstood, in order to understand affiliate programs lets start with terminology. For clarification purposes, an affiliate is defined as any “referrer” or website that promotes a product in an effort to earn revenue. A merchant is defined as someone who owns a product and is sharing revenues with an affiliate based on the affiliate’s performance. Affiliate programs can drive targeted traffic to your website.

There are 3 basic affiliate programs, though only the first two are commonly used.

Pay Per Click - this is when an affiliate is compensated for sending traffic to the merchant. (AdSense is an example of PPC affiliate program).

Pay Per Sale - this is when the affiliate is compensated by the merchant if the referral generates a sale or purchase.

Pay Per Lead - this is when the merchant agrees to pay for a qualified (or sometimes unqualified lead), which is very uncommon because it is subjective and up to the merchant.

Affiliate websites tend to provide information, entertainment, and content services to their customers. The online merchants sell products, goods and services online. These are programs permitting affiliates to earn money based on the visitors to your site who click through to another’s website. Some pay a token amount for the click through and others provide a percentage of sales when a visitor “clicks through” to your site and buys a product or service on the other party’s site. This could represent a value added service to your visitors.

Affiliate programs allow you to pay and track incentives from other websites that send web surfers, leads or paying customers to your website. Commissions based on purchases made by traffic sent from the referring website can be paid. Besides a commission, an affiliate can receive a flat fee, or other incentives for all valid transactions it refers that generate a sale or lead.

Be careful that the affiliate’s web page is not cluttered with banner ads that may crowd out your link, or that be annoying to customers. Affiliate programs enable affiliates to leverage their traffic and customer base in order to profit from e-commerce while merchants benefit from increased exposure and sales.

Commonly traffic to merchant sites is measured and affiliates can clearly see conversion rates. Meaning, they track the percentage of people they are referring, and how much of it results in earned revenue. If the affiliate finds a very low conversion, they will find a better way to use that traffic, quite possibly with a competing merchant product.

In order to be a successful affiliate, the affiliate site needs to either have tons of traffic or target a specific audience, frequently one untapped by the merchant. It has been my experience, the closer the affiliate site content resembles the merchant products, the higher the likelihood of a good conversion rate.

Once you are committed to the idea of affiliates, the next step is to determine the kind of tracking system you are going to use. Sales can be tracked by HTML code, which is placed in a shopping cart or on the ‘order confirmation’/'thank you’ page, and cookies, which are created after the customers click on a banner ad. Cookie killers have been a problem for the affiliate industry. Software vendors have an advantage over other merchants in that new technologies allow software developers to better control compensation. Vendors can ‘wrap’ their software insuring that their affiliates are compensated for referrals, even if the customer downloads a trial version prior to purchasing. Buy now buttons in the software have affiliate ids imbedded in the download. Combined tracking systems have more success than those that rely on a single tracking technology.

In order to develop a successful affiliate network, merchants must realize that affiliates spend ad dollars on site, and product promotion. If the affiliate is not compensated fairly they will not remain in the merchants network. The bottom line is that affiliate relationships are partnerships, when both sides feel the situation is fair and equitable the relationship will be a success.

About The Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.feedforall.com, http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com and http://www.small-business-software.net