Choosing The Right Affiliate Program
The key question is: how do you choose a successful affiliate program? I cannot stress enough the importance of using a trustworthy source for your information. There is an abundance of information available on the Internet, but that does not mean that all of what you can find is accurate, reliable or ethical. Choose to follow the wrong advice and you could find yourself in more than hot water,-you could be facing legal action as well.
You can earn commissions by promoting credit cards from some of the largest banks in the United States. While It is very competitive, yes, it also pays a large commission amount – but how much money do you have to spend to promote it?
Your Action Plan should be: Research – Research – Research ……… and again Research There are some affiliate programs that offer only one way to make money, there are others that give you a combination of ways to earn your commission. In order to accomplish your objective of referring prospects to your advertisers program, choosing an affiliate program that offers you more than one way to earn money is the best choice.
A program that will pay you for a combination of any of these actions: The click of your referral link. The lead when they complete a signup box on their site. The trial download of their product or service. Their purchase of the product or service. These are the most popular because they are an affiliate marketing website’s gold mine. While they are few and far between, there are some programs that will pay for each of these actions.
Pay Per Sale The most common form of affiliate marketing incentive is called Pay Per Sale (PPS). When the visitor clicks your link and makes a purchase from the advertisers website, you are paid a percentage of the sale. This form is very popular with the large Internet retailers. Advantage: You will make the most money from this type of affiliate marketing program on items that are considered “high ticket” items, i.e., sophisticated software like Adobe (Macromedia) Dreamweaver that retails for $899, a 10% commission of this sale is $89, a 25% commission of this sale is $224.75. You can see how important it is to pay attention to the amount of the percentage. If they are only offering a 2% commission on this same $899 item you will only earn $17.98. Risk: You need to be aware that if the purchase is returned to the company for any reason, you will lose your commission as well.
Pay Per Lead (PPL) is another popular form of affiliate marketing; based on acquiring information from the visitor for the retailer’s site. Because there is no actual purchase required, visitors are more apt to leave their personal information in return leaving you a commission, however this is also why the commission is less generous than other types of affiliate marketing.
PPA or Pay Per Action rests almost entirely on how you present the free trial your customer will receive. The goal is to get the customer to try a certain product or service before he takes the action to pay for it. The risk of course, lies on them not actually buying the product at the end of the trial period. The commission for this type of promoting is on the lower end of the scale – you will be much better off, if you can get a commissioning from the sale as well. Risk: They may simply cancel the program rather than purchase it.
The most recognized form of affiliate marketing is Pay Per Click. (((Thousands of merchants lost money when this affiliate marketing program technology became the target of malicious hackers. The sophisticated software programs that they developed to circumvent the tracking methods caused this form of affiliate marketing to become unpopular.)))—– However, the pay per click model is enjoying a rebound in use. It has been adopted by contextual (“text”) advertising companies, who are using encrypted reporting and tracking features behind this technology to prevent fraud.—-This type of affiliate marketing is by far the easiest to promote and gives you a variety of contextual ad providers to choose from. The down side is commission can be very minute or requires a certain number of clicks before you will actually see any cash flow coming your way.
Look for part 2 of this article: Making The Visit To Your Website A Memorable One.
If you are into affiliate marketing look at Johns website for one of the best paying affiliate marketing products out there – Period! The difference isn’t really affiliate marketing versus selling one’s own products it is your commitment to the work. Copyright information…. This article is free for reproduction but must be reproduced in its entirety & this copyright statement must be included.
