What's An Affiliate Program?

An affiliate program is where an owner of a service or product, gives you a commission for doing a certain task, mainly generating sales for their product or service, but it can be per click through to their site, or subscriptions to their newsletter etc. For example, my webhost has an affiliate program, so if I tell people to go there and sign up I'll earn a commission on that sale. I wouldn't ever recommend anything that isn't top notch, so they deserve the recommendation, and you deserve the best webhost out there. So you win because you got a product that has been tried and tested so you know what you're going to get is good quality, I win because I make a commission and have made a visitor to my site happy, and my webhost wins because they have a new customer.

So Everyone wins and everyone's happy.

So Why Isn't Everyone Doing It?

Mainly because a lot of people don't know about them, alternatively, it's because (As I said earlier) it's not as simple as just putting a piece of code there and leaving it,expecting to make a lot of money, because that just wont happen. For best results, it can take a bit of work. It's easy to sign up to them no problem, they'll even give you material to help you promote their product or service (If they're any good), some will even give you entire webpages to help you promote them.

However, for absolute best results, this still isn't enough. Remember, even if they give you an entire page to promote, you still have to get people there right? Not only that but it can take time to see any results. If you already have a big website with loads of people coming to it everyday, you shouldn't have a problem, but a lot of people don't have that luxury.

How Do I Ensure My Success?

Well nothing you do can guarantee your success unfortunately, even if you do everything right, things still might not go your way, that's just life unfortunately. However if you do what I'm about to tell you, you would have massively increased your chances of succeeding by far.

One thing that is an absolute must, is a newsletter or autoresponder (preferably both) for the product you're promoting. Why? To keep in touch with that person, to remind them that you exist, and to remind them why they must have the product or service that your an affiliate of. The thing that most people have a problem with, is that they write like they are trying to sell the website visitor something. This immediately brings up their guard and you'll probably lose them and their trust forever. Instead you need to try and be as helpful as possible, sympathize with their problems and show ways to fix them, and at the end, you can say "product x can fix all these problems for you", they'll think "Wow, this guy's been really helpful to me and the stuff he's talked about previously sounded good, if he's recommending this to me then it must be good."

Then you'll get your sale and commission. But you have to build up that rapport and trust with that visitor first. Doing that with one helpful page, isn't going to improve your chances by much, that's where autoresponders and newsletters come in.

What you need to do is write about 7 helpful articles relating to the problems that, that potential customer has, which product x can solve. However, in the first 5 or 6 articles don't even mention product x. This way you can be helpful to them, get around that barrier and then they'll be more receptive to whatever you're going to recommend to them. Why about 7 articles? Because studies show that it takes about 7 points of high quality, informative contact before an individual will take an action, ushc as purchasing a product. Also, that give you time to build up a lot of trust. It's like you're not selling them a product, you're providing ways for them to solve their problems, and eventually suggesting a product that can help.

Okay So Where Do I Start?

If you have a website already, think of a product that your visitors are likely to want or perhaps already use. Google it and add "affiliate" or "affiliate program" at the end, this will bring up a large selection of websites that sell the product your visitors want, and have an affiliate program for it. Look through as many as you can and see what they have to offer.

You're going to have to think very carefully before picking one. Because whatever you pick, will have your credibility all over it, so if it's crap, everyone will think you're just trying to sell crap and make money without considering their well being. So, as you can imagine, your credibility and level of trust will take a massive nose dive.

So if possible, ask for a free sample to test it out and see if it's any good before you recommend it to your subscribers. Most companies will be reluctant to do this if it's a physical product, but if it's a digital product like an electronic book for example, they would be very foolish not to let you try it.

Think about it, how much does it cost to let someone download something? Probably just a few pennies in bandwidth and that's it!

That's not the only thing you'll have to think about though. You also need to think about the commission level you'll be receiving as well. If it's a digital product, expect a minimum of 40% commission, anything less than this and they probably don't believe in their product enough, which should send alarm bells to ring off in your head, i.e. stay away from them. If it's a physical product, it will vary quite a bit from industry to industry.

You also need to think of ticket price, i.e. how expensive it is. Is it a high ticket item? If it is, expect far fewer sales. You need to think carefully, do my visitors have the money to pay for this? If not, forget it. Also remember that the higher the ticket price, the more trust you're going to have to build, meaning more work that you'll have to put in.

You'll also need to think about how often you're paid and what the minimum payment thresh hold is. For example, are you paid monthly, and is the minimum $50 earned before you get paid? If it's quarterly payments or anything above $100 before you can expect to get paid, you should steer clear from them. Imagine if you put all that hard work in, only to not quite make $100 for a long time, it means you'll be waiting for that $100. The same applies if it's quarterly payments i.e. every 3 months. You shouldn't have to wait 3 months to get paid, so don't. There should be plenty of affiliate programs on the internet, and probably many for you're industry, so don't settle for substandard affiliate programs.

What If I Don't Already Have A Website?

If you don't have a website already, then you can make an entire website around any affiliate product you like. This should get you a decent amount of success. Because you'll be focused on one topic. And can easily dedicate an entire newsletter to that topic, hopefully resulting in more sales.

However, as you're starting from scratch it might take you longer to be successful. In order to get people to your site right away, you'll probably have to use ppc (Pay per click) advertising. This means putting an advertisement for the product or service you're promoting, into google or any other search engine, and paying x amount every time someone clicks on your advertisement. I'll go more in-depth with pay per click in another article.

For now that should help you get started. Best of luck