Check Before Signing Up As Not All Affiliate Programs Are Worth Joining!
If you are just starting out in internet marketing, chances are you will probably notice that quite a number of bloggers and fellow internet marketers often recommending “Affiliate Marketing” as one of the easiest online marketing methods to make a buck online.
Without the shadow of a doubt, the affiliate business is a booming industry on the internet.
Affiliate sites promoting all sorts of products are plastered all across the internet.
I bet you have come across the phrase “Slap a couple of attention grabbing banners of some hyped up affiliate product on your blog or website and “Ka Ching”, the affiliate money will start rolling in”.
Sounds familiar?
However, the underlying truth about starting any form of business is that you need due diligence. Be sure to do your research before plunging head first into it.
And affiliate marketing is no exception.
So what factors should we be aware of before signing up for an affiliate program?
The best affiliate sites to join may not necessarily be the ones paying the highest commissions.
From my experience, there are quite a few factors to look out for, here’s my checklist for consideration before starting an affiliate business venture.
( 1 ) Do you need to buy the product first before you can sign up as an affiliate or do they provide a free way to join without buying the product or service?
Some affiliate programs only allow members who have purchased their products or services to become affiliates as this will cut down on “customers” who just want to get a discount.
( 2 ) Do they have a 24/7 affiliate support center that can quickly answer your questions?
This seemingly unimportant factor will apparently become your top priority especially when you have questions when it comes to irregularities in commission payouts.
( 3 ) Is the affiliate product highly targeted to your niche market audience?
No point promoting a product that won’t sell if the product is not highly targeted.
( 4 ) Does the affiliate program have real time tracking and stats reporting features that will inform you once a sale is made.
Like i often say, besides marketing & promotions, tracking is the next most important aspect of your business.
And with a tracking and stats feature, you will be aware of which ads are making you the most money.
( 5 ) What is the lead time and commission threshold before you can receive your commission paycheck?
Another important factor when money is concerned. Shorter payout intervals means that you can put your earned profits to better use such as for another PPC or marketing promotions that will earn you more money.
( 6 ) What is the commission payout percentage?
The usual commission payout is from 25% to 75% of the selling price of the affiliate product less handing fees if it is from an affiliate network.
In my book, the actual commission received after deducting all the handling charges must be at least $30USD per sale to be worth my time and efforts but this value varies among different marketers.
( 7 ) Do you get credited for a sale if a potential customer comes back in a month’s time and then make a purchase?
This is also important as statistics have shown that potential customers need to see your affiliate ad at least 7 times before deciding to make a purchase.
Does your affiliate program make use of tracking “cookies” that are stored on potential customer’s browsers enbeded with your affiliate details? This is allow the sale to be credited to your account.
( 8 ) Do they provide you with proven sales materials suck as text links, banners, classified ads, email promos etc?
This factor in my opinion is crucial if you were to make any form of affiliate sale and commissions.
With a given set of backend materials you can quickly kick start your affiliate marketing campaign. Sure, it will certainly boost your chances of making a sale.
But to leapfrog and compete with the thousands of other affiliates who are also using the same set of marketing materials, you seriously need to “modify” them to give it a more personal touch.
Try it and I’m sure you will witness a significant increase in affiliate sales and commissions.
Well, that’s my 2 cents worth when it comes to signing up for a new affiliate program.
Dominate Adwords Using This Simple 5 Step Adwords Guide. ( Part 5 of 5 )
In the final installment of our Adwords Guide, we will end with one of the most essential aspect of our adwords PPC campaign, and that is “Tracking” our results.
Although this section is pretty short & straight forward, I can’t stress enough the importance of tracking your results for both your adwords ads as well as for your landing pages.
However, tracking your campaign can sometimes be a pain but a necessity as we need to weed out and scrap all those keywords that aren’t converting into sales and therefore optimizing our PPC campaigns for maximum profits.
But if time or the apparent lack of it is an issue, you can make use of technology to help solve your tracking needs.
Like i said, I’m a tech -junkie and i strive to automate every aspect of my online business if possible.
A “Do-It-All” program like SpeedPPC is a wonderful accessory for automating all my PPC campaigns all the way from ad creation to stats tracking.
But if your budget doesn’t allow it, you can download a Free self hosted PPC tracking software called Prosper202.
Personally i have not used it before, but the reviews and feedback seems pretty positive.
Well, who can argue if you can get if for Free right? Do try it out and post a comment on its effectiveness, ok 
In case you are not aware, you can also use Google’s own “Conversion Tracking code” for this purpose too.
Just follow the links in your Adwords account to obtain this code and then follow the instructions on how to place it on your website.
Like i mentioned in my last few posts, we should be using our own landing pages if we were to build our own business and not other people’s business.
The obtained tracking code should be placed on the “Thank You” page of your own website.
In other words, the page where the subscriber is directed to after keying in their name and email address or whatever action that your landing page requests of the subscriber.
By doing so, you can then track to see how well your Landing page is converting for subscribers or sales.
On a final note, if you are an advocate of the “Direct Linking” strategy i mentioned previously, i suggest you promote Clickbank products.
The reason being with Clickbank products, you are able to enter an unique tracking code to the end of your affiliate link to determine which keyword helped generate that particular sale.
For example :
A typical Clickbank Affiliate Link looks like this :
http://username.product.hop.clickbank.net where “username” is your Clickbank Username and “product” is the Affiliate Product Code.
A Clickbank Affiliate Link with a “Tracking Code” attached at the end will look like this :
http://username.product.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=ABC where “ABC” is the keyword you are bidding on.
With that we conclude our 5 part Adwords Guide blogging series.
Hope they are useful for all your PPC campaigns and break a leg making tons of money using PPC.
