Lessons Learned From Affiliate Programs
Don't create a site just to sell products or services through
one or multiple affiliate programs because you will mostly
likely end up spending more in advertising than what you will
make on commissions. I can almost guarantee that you will lose
money, and keep on losing money, and end up just like me. I
learned it the hard way. I hope you don't make the same mistake
I have. I was very clumsy in making that decision, and I regret
taking such careless actions.
If you want to have some chance of making money from affiliate
programs, you will have to have an established website first
with continuous slow of traffic, which spending so much in
advertising. Repeat visitors are the best since they don't cost
you anything, and will most likely make you money. In order to
have repeat visitors, you have to have something different.
Affiliated websites all have the same products, and those
visitors will most likely end up going straight to the affiliate
program providers to take care of their business.
If you already own an online store, and have repeat customers,
try to use affiliate programs like what Amazon.com offers, to
give your customers a bit more variety. Products that are
relevant to your store and something that you don't carry. What
I like about Amazon's affiliate program is that you can pick and
choose what products you want to advertise on your website. You
can be as specific as "silver mini iPod 6GB", and Amazon will
give you a small HTML code that will give you the image of that
iPod, the price, and the link with your affiliate ID in it to
track your sales. Other affiliate programs provided by companies
like Overstock.com and Buy.com only provide banners in all
different sizes, and search boxes where people can use it as
product search engines, which will search through the search box
owner's product database.
Majority of big online companies and stores that offer affiliate
programs, all tracking and commission payouts are done through
LinkShare and Commission Junction. Even banners, search boxes,
and links are taken from these sites, not directly from the
affiliate program offering companies. From credit-card signups
(all bank websites) to membership signups (like eBay.com) to
product sales (like Amazon.com); companies offer so many ways
for affiliates to make money. Some actually do become wealthy
from these affiliate programs, but like I said before, they use
these affiliate programs on their already established websites.
Make sure you put up relevant ads and products on your site. If
you put electronics on your site when your site is known for
selling chocolates and cookies, the audience you've been
targeting to establish your site is not there looking for DVD
players.
Just because I wasn't successful with Amazon.com's affiliate
program doesn't mean that all affiliate programs should be
avoided. I didn't know much about anything, how these programs
worked etc., before I started the whole website and advertising
thing. However, I manage to learn from my mistakes...just that
the mistakes I make are costly. I hope what my mistakes have
taught me would help you save some money and time.
If you had similar experience as me and would like to share your
story with the audience, please feel free to email me with your
writing piece at writings@imbae.net