How to choose an affiliate program that will make you money
After several years as a professional affiliate, I have come to
the point where I have a short checklist of aspects that I go
through when deciding on joining an affiliate program, or in
fact even persisting with one.
The fact is too many sites merely add an affiliate program on
with the hope that the increased expose will lead to more
website sales. In these cases it is the affiliate who can lose
out badly, as well as the merchant.
No matter what sort of site you have, be it a shopping mall,
informational site, blog or specialty product store that
features products sold via your affiliation with the merchant,
you need to be sure that you are getting the best reward for
your efforts. So here are some aspects based on my experience,
for potential affiliates of a merchant to consider:
1. Does the merchant's site have a free call number for
telephone sales prominently displayed? If they do then they are
probably robbing you of at least 30% of your rightful income.
Lots of people, even more so now that broadband internet
connections are becoming more commonplace, will pick up the
phone. Some fair merchants have a referrer ID that is displayed
next to the phone number and this is always asked when a call
comes in.
2. Are mainly banner ads offered as the marketing inventory? If
it is all they offer then they know nothing about internet
marketing. Any form of graphic ad will have a 50% or less
click-through rate. Banner ads are at best a free form of
branding for the merchant. Most sales come from text based ads.
The merchant should offer a range of marketing collateral
including simple text ads right the way through to material that
can easily be dropped right into a newsletter.
3. What is the site's conversion rate. Email the site and ask.
This question will stop most website owners dead in their tracks
because most have no idea. Remember, they are playing a numbers
game - more affiliates hopefully means more traffic so
potentially even a poorly performing site will show an improved
number of sales. Remember - the site that you promote needs to
be working for you so you get rewarded. A poorly converting site
is doing you no favours.
4. If the website owner does not know the conversion rate,
follow your click-through stats carefully. If you are not
getting at least a 1% conversion rate dump them and replace with
a merchant who can deliver.
5. Is the site easy to navigate, and does all navigation lead to
making sales an easy process. Personally I do not like sites
that ask customers to register - this is a significant barrier
to sales.
6. Does the site owner communicate? Do they promptly return
emails - if they don't get back to you within 24 hours take this
as a warning flag - 48 hours then forget them. Also, ask to be
kept informed of specials etc so you can promote these.
7. If you have above average programming skills and can
integrate databases, ask if you can get data feeds - or a csv
file of their products that you can use to populate pages on
your site. This is more advanced than average affiliate stuff,
so don't get too hung up on this.
8. Reporting and statistics are critical. You need to know at
least click-through and sales on a day by day basis. Ideally you
should also know the number of impressions the ad has had (think
of your page as real estate, sales per click is one thing, but
sales per impression is also important - can say a lot about the
position of your ads!). You may wish to make use of third party
software like PHPAds or similar that allows you to track. Look
at why click-through rates may be poor. It is because you are
using banner ads and not text ads, or have you tried moving the
location of ads, or trying new contexts. If the conversion rate
is good when people arrive, ensure you have maximised the
click-through rate.
These are the essential aspects when considering a merchant's
affiliate program. There are others, like commission
percentages, but often it is better to have a highly performing
merchant at a few percent lower than a poorly performing
merchant.
Don't be fooled by promises of easy money on the affiliates
sign-up pages. Be prepared to work for your money. Once you have
joined a program, maintain a close watch on performance. Compare
and contrast and don't become one of the 95% of affiliates who
are a complete waste of time for the merchant. Making money from
affiliate programs is not a set and forget process - it takes
work, plenty of it.