Selecting Affiliate Programs Intelligently

by: Cary Christian

Tonight I want to put together several concepts I've talked to you about over the past six months or so.  What we'll end up with, I hope, is a better understanding of how you should choose affiliate programs to represent and the market you should be targeting.

First off, don't forget that your ultimate goal is to develop your own products.  But in the meantime, you may have to rely on affiliate programs to generate some cash flow.  Even after you develop your own products you can still use complementary affiliate programs to supplement your income quite nicely.

THE BASICS

There are certain intrinsic qualities an affiliate program should have before you ever consider aligning yourself with it.  In a nutshell, they are:

1.  The program and product should be well respected online.  Always opt for quality.  If you sell a substandard product or program, it is your reputation that will suffer.  Do not put yourself at a disadvantage for the remainder of your online career by selling junk now.

2.  The program should offer substantial commissions.  Your time is valuable.  Don't waste it selling for pennies.

3.  The program should enjoy a solid sales to visitor ratio.  If it's less than one sale per hundred visitors, find something else.  (Hopefully, it will be better, but 1:100 is fairly standard for good products depending on how targeted your advertising is).  If you cannot obtain the information on sales to visitor ratios from the owner of the program, find another program.  They should be willing to share this information with you.

4.  Choose programs that complement the theme of your site, or your proposed site.  You do not want to sell golf clubs on an Internet marketing site.

5.  You should be paid at least monthly and be able to choose a variety of payment arrangements, such as by check, PayPal, ACH transfer, etc.

6.  You should be able to view your statistics in real time.

7.  You should receive training from the site on how to sell the products or programs.

This list could go on and on, but these seven factors do a pretty good job of covering the basics.

CHOOSING YOUR MARKET

It is normal for most beginning marketers to turn to Internet marketing affiliate programs as their primary means of making money online.  I believe this is the biggest mistake you can make!

As I wrote in a previous article, the market for Internet marketing programs and products is far too finite and circular in nature.  You basically have ten million Internet marketers trying to sell to ten million other Internet marketers.  It's like Sears, Wal-Mart, J.C.  Penney's, and all the other department stores only selling to each other and ignoring the public. 

Get out of that market!  It is far too cluttered and represents a very inefficient market for anyone not already firmly established.  Turn your sights to products you can sell to the other half a billion people online.

Check out sites like ShareASale and Commission Junction for some ideas of quality products you can sell.  Visit the websites of major retailers who carry products you are interested in selling and find out if they have an affiliate program.  There are far more products to sell online than the latest downline club or M^L^M opportunity.

EVALUATE YOUR CHOSEN MARKET FOR NICHES

Once you've found a category of products you would like to sell, take it a step further: find a niche.  If you like golf and want to join some golf affiliate programs, go ahead and join the affiliate program of one of the major golf equipment suppliers.  But that should not be where your focus lies.  You will earn some money referring customers to the major player you align with, but you will earn far more if your primary focus is a niche, such as some form of specialized instruction or unique training tools.

Look for products that you might be able to find fairly easily offline but not online.  You could even make a deal with a local store owner to sell his or her products online.  They will be happy to have the extra volume.  These types of offline/online partnerships can be very, very profitable.

Print up some business cards and maybe a standard proposal or explanation of what you can do for them.  Then, hit the streets until you find a store that's interested in what you bring to the table.  Remember that most local retail businesses still are not online or, even if they are, have put up nothing more than a "billboard" site that probably does not even accept credit cards.  Show these people how you can generate sales for them and give them a deal where they can't lose.  You sell, you earn.  You don't sell, it doesn't cost them a penny.

There are many, many Internet millionaires who never once tried to sell anything related to Internet marketing online.  They realized there are far better markets still available.  Learn Internet marketing, but sell something else!

USE THE SEARCH ENGINES

If you're still working on your website (you ARE working on your website, aren't you?) and you do not have enough content to rank well in the major search engines like Google and directories like Yahoo and the Open Directory, you can still market your affiliate programs using the pay-per-click engines.  Use them!  There is no better source of targeted traffic.  The PPC engines are also a back door way of getting into the major search engines.  They can level the playing field dramatically.

Sp^m has just about ruined email marketing for everyone.  I do not believe it is a good idea to rely on it anymore.  Most of the other free marketing methods do not work very well for direct selling.  They have their place in building an opt-in list and similar activities, but you just cannot count on them for sales.

You're going to have to bite the bullet and spend something on advertising.  Given that, your best buy is the PPC engines.  Learn about them and use them properly and they will pay for themselves and start providing you with a nice profit.

Don't forget to test before you spend all your PPC money, though.  Draw up several descriptions for the keywords you want to use and find out which ones draw best.  Test different versions of your sales pages to find out which ones convert visitors the best.  Spend a little time up front fine-tuning your campaign and you'll save a lot.

As soon as you get your content up to snuff, submit your site to the major search engines.  Don't ignore such a tremendous source of fr^e, targeted traffic.  Allocate some time every week to work on your content and learn the basics of optimizing your pages for the search engines.

DO IT!

You've just reviewed a very broad plan for selling intelligently as an affiliate.  It is a simple plan but one that requires some work on your part to execute it profitably.  If you approach it seriously, it will work.  Most of the components of success online are really not all that difficult.  People just make it seem that way because they either try to take too many shortcuts or do not have the drive and motivation to do what is required to succeed. How bad do you want it?

(c) copyright 2003