| How To Select An Affiliate Program |
Copyright © F. Terrence Markle - All Rights Reserved
Are you having difficulties in selecting an internet affiliate
program to join and promote? Too many opportunities to sort
through? Uncertain of your next step? Guess what - you are not
alone. Join the crowd! You will probably find the road full of
potholes in your research, review and selection of the right
affiliate program for you.
You should consider the following steps to help you make the
decision on which affiliate program to join and promote. First,
you need to find the affiliate programs that are available for
you to join and promote. Second, you need to sort through all
these opportunities to learn the details of each affiliate
program. Third, you need to select a program (or programs) that
fits your wants and needs (whatever they may be).
I am making the basic assumption that you want to select a
program that will result in cash flowing into your pocket rather
than flowing out of your pocket. Look out for the potholes in
the road. There are a lot of them out there. You should keep
in mind that most affiliate programs will not make any promises
regarding your future potential earnings or lack of earnings.
Warning - Avoid any program that makes promises that seem
unrealistic or too good to be true.
You should review a wide selection of affiliate programs before
you decide which program (or programs) is right for you. As
painful as it sounds, you need to do the research before making
any decision. You should perform sufficient (and not
necessarily exhaustive) research to understand what programs
exist and what they provide to the affiliate (promoter/seller)
and customer (buyer). The amount of research you perform
depends on what you need to make an informative decision.
The process of research is probably the most painful and yet the
most educational part of setting up an online internet business.
Do not cut it short because you will probably pay for it dearly
in different ways at a later date. This includes spending
unnecessary money, pursuing the wrong marketing paths and just
plain wasting your time and energy.
It is essential to perform thorough research if you are going to
profit from any promotional effort of an affiliate program. It
is an established fact that commercial success starts with
having a product to sell (hopefully a product that provides
value, usefulness and/or happiness to the buyer of the product).
It is another well known fact that the economics picture is not
complete without a seller and a buyer that are willing and able
to sell and buy the product. Warning - Do not get involved with
an affiliate program where it is uncertain what comprises the
actual product being sold.
Many factors, including the selling price of the product and the
total cost of the product (potential costs include
manufacturing, storing, distributing, marketing, and selling),
need to be evaluated to determine if a profit can be made on the
promotion and sale of an affiliate product. As a side note, the
difference between financial success and failure could be a
simple matter of promoting a product that has more appeal or
intrinsic value to the potential buyer than the cost of the
product.
The research process should consist of gathering sufficient
information on potential opportunities that will enable you to
make an informed decision on what affiliate program(s) to join
and promote. You will need to devote precious time and energy
to accomplish this phase of the affiliate selection process.
In order to locate the affiliate opportunities, you should start
by using a national search engine. Select "key words" in your
search (such as: affiliate opportunities, affiliate ebook,
affiliate networks, affiliate income, affiliate marketing, etc)
to locate opportunities. Be innovative and change the search
word(s) to match your personal needs and interest.
You should probably direct your attention to the top 10 to 20
search results for any key word group since these are likely to
be the websites with the highest level of internet traffic.
Higher traffic is an indicator that the website gets visitors
and is probably in demand. Demand is important since it is one
part of the economic "demand versus supply" equation.
Write down the appropriate information from each website that
will provide you with data to review after you complete your
online searching. You should probably print out the sales
letter and any other useful information that will help in your
follow-up review and evaluation. Part of your research will
include communicating with the owner of each website that you
are considering.
In addition, join some of the internet discussion boards and
chat rooms that discuss the topic of affiliate programs. This
can potentially provide a wealth of information in your review
and comparison process. You can use the search engines to find
these discussion boards and chat rooms.
Another source of information resides in ebooks and ezine
articles that have already been written on the subject of
affiliate programs and affiliate marketing. You can locate
these ebooks and articles by using the search engines. Do not
hesitate to communicate with the authors. Work with the authors
because it may help you in your quest for usable information.
You may find some authors willing to discuss your specific
concerns since it may provide them with useful material for
their future use.
In the process of performing your research, you will be
compiling a lot of hand-written notes and web page printouts of
potential affiliate programs. Furthermore, you will probably
accumulate material on your computer's hard drive of website
pages on affiliate programs that you had an interest in
performing a follow-up analysis upon.
The process of research is not only time consuming but also may
consume some of your money. How much money you spend depends on
the types of programs you are considering. Furthermore, you may
have to join a program or purchase something (for example, buy
the ebook that is being promoted) in order to get the
information you need for your review and evaluation phase. You
should always ask for a free copy - it does not hurt to try.
Keep yourself organized by putting the paper information
(hand-written notes and web page printouts) into 3-ring binders.
Use tab inserts to separate each affiliate program. Each tab
insert should be labeled with an appropriate affiliate program
title. This will enable easy identification of each program in
the binder and access to the detailed data.
The next step is to make a "summary table" that includes each
affiliate program you are considering. The summary table should
contain information on each affiliate program such as: name of
the program, URL website, definition of what the program offers
to the affiliate, description of what is offered to the customer
of the product, cost of the program to the customer, commission
payable to the affiliate, description of the downline sales
commissions (if any), training available to the affiliate by the
owner of the product, sales material available to the affiliate,
etc.
Next, you need to review, evaluate and compare the various
affiliate programs at a summarized level. This is the phase of
utilizing all the information that you collected, categorized
and organized during the search phase. This process can now be
accomplished with considerably less stress and anxiety than just
looking at a list of affiliate programs.
You now have the important and essential information (that
fulfills your needs) necessary to make an informed decision.
The summary table provides you with the data to compare the
different affiliate opportunities (whether it is only two or
many).
At this point, your review and evaluation process will probably
lead to more questions. However, your questions should now be
very targeted. Any follow-up research you need to perform to
obtain answers should be highly focused.
Make certain you communicate with the owner of each affiliate
program to gain as much knowledge as possible about the
respective affiliate program. The owner of the program should
be anxious to hear your questions and help you since it could
result in increased revenue to the owner. Make your questions
as direct and to the point as possible to uncover your deepest
concerns.
Finally, what did you achieve or learn from your search of
ebooks and ezine articles on the topic of affiliate topics? Use
this information in your decision process. You should
communicate with the author(s) if you found something of
interest that can help you in your eventual decision. The
author(s) should also be willing to talk to you since it could
result in material for future ebooks they might write.
I hope you find this information valuable and worth your time in
reading. A decision based on having the appropriate information
is definitely worth more than a decision made by "guessing."
This article is just the beginning. You will find your niche in
affiliate programs by performing a proper research, review and
comparison of available programs before making your informed
decision. Good luck in your quest to find the right affiliate
program(s) for your future personal and financial success.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2003 F. Terrence Markle - All Rights Reserved.
Join a FREE 7-Day eCourse on earning income on the web.
http://www.QuikSystems.com/info/free7day.htm
---------------------------------------------------------------
|
Back to Articles Index
|
|
 |
|
