A good way to tell if the affiliate program you belong to is
serious about their affiliate program commissions is the
percentage they are paying you. If someone is offering you 10%
commission, and they are keeping the rest, then you need to ask
yourself "Should I really be in this affiliate program?".
One affiliate program I have joined pays out 45% commission to
their affiliates and another 10% to the 2nd tier. That's 55%!
They only keep 45% and it's from this that they take their
costs. Either they've gone completely mad or they are very
smart! I suspect they are very smart.
By paying such high affiliate program commissions they are
attracting many affiliates to their programs. This means they
can sell a higher volume. With a higher volume of sales they
can afford to give away such a high commission.
Because they are giving so much away to their affiliates with
high commissions it shows they are supremely confident in the
worth of their product or service and its ability to sell
itself. Their product or service is that good.
The affiliates are doing all the pre-selling, all the hard
work, getting the eyeballs at their web sites. You want to get
paid for it. Do not accept 10% commission rates. Set yourself a
standard of nothing less than 20% and make sure that the 20% is
more than just a couple of dollars.
It is with the big-percentage payers where you can make some
decent commissions. The 40%-plus hitters. These BIG affiliate
program commissions are the ones that will see your bank
balance explode each and every month.
After learning of the success many online businesses have had increasing their sales with an affiliate program, you decided to follow suit. You hammered out a compensation plan both encouraging to affiliates and profitable to your business. You've got tracking software in place. You've turned the key in the ignition of your marketing machine. and nothing's happening.
Your army of affiliates can be viewed metaphorically as a tree. Full grown, it will thrive in rain and sunshine. Strong changing winds can shake its branches, but the tree will continue to grow. In the early seed stage, however, special care is needed if you want your tree to break through the surface.
You spent a great deal of time, energy, and likely at least a little money creating your affiliate program. You need to attract strong affiliates that can rapidly build your customer base and return your investment. How can you bring these powerful marketing dynamos into your camp, ideally without drawing on your already diminished cash reserves?
1.) Submit to Online Directories
The method that will show the most immediate increase in new affiliates is listing your program in online affiliate directories. These reference sites are the first stop for hungry potential affiliates looking for the income opportunity that is going to allow them to quit their 9 to 5 jobs. Many such directories exist, and obviously some will bring you better results than others. Since submitting to almost all of these directories is free, though, get listed on as many as you can. Here are a few links to submission pages to get you started, but by no means should you stop with just these few:
http://www.becomeanaffiliate.com/cgi-bin/add.cgi
http://www.affiliatesoftware.info/joinaffiliatedirectory.php
http://www.affiliatescreen.com/suggest_program.php
http://www.affiliatematch.com/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.2-tier.com/cgi-bin/add_url.cgi
http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com/links/add.cgi
http://www.earnfind.com/addprogram-howto.php
2.) Advertise in Your Own Newsletter
Hopefully you've been collecting email addresses from your website and sending a regular newsletter to your visitors. (If not, read this article: http://www.zeromillion.com/ebiz/creating-an-email-newsletter.html) Your newsletter subscribers are a precious handful of people that have expressed direct interest in keeping abreast of the latest developments with your product/service and company. Give them what they want! You can kick off your affiliate program with an article in your newsletter explaining the benefits and encouraging your subscribers to participate. Your future newsletters can contain short blurbs about the affiliate program and how it's progressing to inform new subscribers and remind your original readers.
3.) Post to Affiliate Forums and Newsgroups
Approach this method with caution. No one will be impressed if you post a blatant advertisement or a plea to join your affiliate program. If you find a forum that contains such messages, don't even bother making a post there. The forum probably isn't moderated, and almost certainly isn't read by many people. The place to include information about your website and program is in your profile (and in your signature line if other posters do so). A serious forum, read by the type of people you want to have as affiliates, will only contain posts with relevant and useful content instead of advertising fluff messages.
How can you add relevant and useful content? The first step is to read some of the existing posts and get a feel for the general personality of the forum. At best, reading old posts will spark questions that can be turned into relevant posts and generate interested responses. At worst, you'll see what's been talked about recently, so you don't make the awkward mistake of asking a question that was answered a few days ago.
If no topics come to mind after reading old posts, a possible strategy is to ask for the advice of some experienced affiliates in how you could improve your program. You'll find different ideas on what constitutes a solid compensation plan, tracking system, or incentive program. Beyond getting attention for your program, this is a great opportunity to improve your program by picking the brains of people who've been in the game longer than you.
Affiliates make money in pretty much two ways, firstly by direct sales (straight forward, no need to elaborate on this) and secondly by commissions from on-selling.
In this article I will be focusing on the affiliates, better known as your down line, your team, your partners, your network.
There are several different types of affiliates, the elusive Super Affiliate, Active Affiliates from Direct Sales, Active Affiliates who On-Sell and inactive affiliates.
The Active Affiliate from Direct Sales are the ones who join up under you and maintain their subscription to the program/service but don't on-sell to others. Giving you Direct Sale Commission.
The Active Affiliate who On-Sell's are the ones that provide you passive income giving you a percentage of their sales, this is known as TIER income. It is estimated that less than 5% of your Active Affiliates from Direct Sales will become On-Sellers. However, in saying that, the higher the commission on the product/service the higher percentage rate for Active Affiliate from Direct Sales to become On-Sellers.
So, lets look at a scenario, 25 Active Affiliates join under you, selling webhosting and you get $10.00 per direct sale as commission per month, assuming the Active Affiliate maintains their subscription. That's and extra $250 a month in your pocket. Not a lot of money, BUT if you repeat this process in 9 other programs then your monthly income increases to $2500.00.
If the program being promoted is a necessity i.e. webhosting , auto responders etc, it is likely the Active Affiliate will maintain their subscription. However if the program is not a necessity item such as an ebook or similar then it is unlikely the affiliate will maintain their subscription, so choose affiliate programs wisely.
Dedicated Active Affiliate On-Sellers are a picky group that require a lot of maintenance, online support and regular contact. The product/service has to be lucrative for them to on-sell, with at least a 4+ tier system for it to be worthwhile.
Unless you have the time and money to invest in On-Seller's then my suggestion today is for you to go for width not depth, and then duplicate it many times over providing Multiple Streams of Income.
The last article in this series will focus fully on ACTIVE AFFILIATES and how to get them. Till then to your online success!
The beauty of the Internet is you can own your own business and
earn good money without spending much time at it. You don't have
to mind the store or keep office hours. You don't even have to
be there to answer the phone.
I've known any number of successful Internet entrepreneurs who
got started earning profits online while still working demanding
full-time jobs. Kevin Needham of Memail.com became a major name
on the Web while still holding down his government job. The
media often tells the story of Jim Daniels who started his online
publishing empire while working as a middle-manager for a tech
firm.
Kevin Nunley was a DJ at an oldies station when his articles
started appearing on AOL. Superstar Internet biz person and tech
consultant Kate Schultz was a corporate manager when she
began posting her own ads online.
The moral of these stories is don't let your busy life stand in
the way of your desire to earn extra money or even a good living
online. The Internet will bend, twist, and adapt for you more
than any other kind of business.
But you have to go at it the right way or you will wind up
spending way more time and money than you intended. Here is a
simple plan to get you earning online while working at it just 10
to 20 minutes each day.
1. Choose your affiliate program wisely. You will want one main
program you can promote intensively. It is much easier to make
an impact with one good program you market heavily than spreading
yourself too thin over a dozen or more programs.
Right now affiliates report their biggest earners are information
products that tell affiliate program members and others how to
earn better profits. Ken Envoy's "Make Your Site Sell" course,
Corey Rudl's "Insider Secrets," and Jim Daniels' big "Make A
Living Online" are real winners in this category.
You can also do well working with a company that represents many
products and other affiliate programs. Check the many affiliate
products and services housed under the ClickBank.com umbrella.
QuinStreet.com features direct marketing services and ecommerce
technology.
2. Market to friends and associates using a simple signature
file in your email. This is dirt simple yet incredibly powerful.
Email messages have a very personal quality that sells. Your
email program will let you set this up.
Your sig file should start with a headline that tweaks the
reader's interest. Then follow with your web site address and
your autoresponder address (more on this later.) Here's what
your "sig" might look like.
------------
I made $500 with this program last month. Want
to know more? See http://googlemoney13.com
or write to mailto:surender19797@gmail.com
------------
3. Remember how I promised you would only have to work 10 to 20
minutes per day? The key to this is using the Internet's ability
to automate tasks.
No question about it, you will want a series of canned email
messages you can send to people who are interested. Use a
multiple autoresponder to do this (freeautobot.com is a good
one.) When someone emails your autoresponder address, they get
your messages, one each day.
Chances are the affiliate program offers sales letters you can
use. If not, get a professional writer to help you put together
three sales letters. A set of three often works as well as the
more common seven messages.
4. Finally, get your own web site. It is super easy to build a
nice page or two using the free systems at Tripod.com and
Homestead.com.
While most marketing on the Net is done with email, customers
expect you have a web site with additional information.
Rather than using the free site the affiliate program gives you,
create your own site. Your site can tell your story, help people
get to know you, tell why you support the affiliate product, then
link to your affiliate member site.
There are two reasons for this. Starting prospects with your own
site gives you a lot more power to sell. You can tell the story
of how you used the product and succeeded (very powerful!) and
display additional products or services that compliment your main
affiliate offer.
Most search engines won't list a canned affiliate site, but they
WILL list the original site you create. Search engines can be an
immense automated source of free visitors.
That's all it takes! Do these four things 10 to 20 minutes per
day and you will be well on your way to earning with affiliate
programs.
Recent stats show the average person spends 20 hours per week
online. If you get organized, there is no reason you can't use
at least a little of your weekly Internet time to work your own
small business.
Promoting affiliate programs can provide you with a good extra income or even a full time income online.
To help you maximize your profit promoting affiliate programs, I've provided the following tips to help you successfully market your affiliate programs more effectively to your site's visitors.
1. Publish an e-zine.
Running an e-zine will allow you to run prime position ads for your affiliate programs in every issue you publish, and is the #1 way for you to follow up with your site's visitors.
You can also easily increase your commissions by sending out special announcements to your subscriber base whenever one of the affiliate programs you promote is offering a special bonus or a special limited time offer.
Once you build up your circulation you can further increase your profits by charging for ad space in your publication.
2. Use a pop up on your site that promotes your e-zine.
Using a pop up as a well as a subscription e-mail or form on your site can substantially increase the number of your visitors that subscribe to your publication.
Your pop up will draw your visitors' attention right to your e-zine, and if you offer your visitors free bonuses for subscribing to your e-zine such as free ebooks or free ads you can further increase the number of visitors who subscribe to your publication.
3. Offer free e-mail workshops (e-mail courses) to your visitors.
Making e-mail workshops will enable you to effectively promote one or several affiliate programs that offer products that relate to the subject of your workshop.
Many affiliate programs provide their affiliates with articles to post on their sites or run in their e-zines which you can use to successfully form the different parts of your workshop.
If you already write articles, you can easily use your own articles to form the different parts of your workshop and transform your articles into yet another powerful marketing tool.
To get the most out of your e-mail workshops, offer your workshops both on your site and by using a pop up, and use your workshops to increase subscriptions to your e-zine as well as repeat visitors your website.
4. Publish your articles on your site.
Posting your articles on your site is a great way to continually add content to your site and draw more repeat visitors.
To successfully use your articles to promote affiliate programs offer a free e-mail workshop in your resource box or use your resource box to promote your e-zine.
This will provide you with an effective way to successfully follow up with your prospects when your articles get published as well as when your visitors read your articles.
5. Offer free ebooks on your site.
Many affiliate programs provide their affiliates with ebooks they can rebrand with their unique affiliate URL and these can be used as an effective marketing tool.
The best way to promote your affiliate programs with ebooks, however, is to make your own ebooks.
If you write your own articles, you can create a unique promotional item by making an ebook compilation of your articles with links to affiliate programs you promote.
You can also create a best of compilation of your e-zine's top issues to drive more subscriptions to your publication or if you make e-mail workshops you can transform these into your ebooks content.
To further increase your profits, offer your ebooks as a free bonus or part of a free bonus for subscribing to your e-zine, and/or allow your visitors to rebrand your ebook with a link to their own business, affiliate program or opportunity.
When selecting an affiliate program to join you need to know how to choose a successful affiliate program.
Look in the wrong place and you might find a dud but look in the right place and you might be on to a winner.
Here are 7 tips to help you choose a successful affiliate program to join:
1. Look at associateprograms.com This is the ‘affiliate central' of affiliate programs. You can virtually guarantee to find a successful program here and you can choose from tons of subject areas.
2. Look at clickbank.com Nearly every product they have for sale has an affiliate program. Many of them are extremely good and most pay very high commissions. (some over 50%)
3. Affiliate resource sites usually offer their best affiliate programs. As affiliate resources sites are specialists in affiliate programs you can be pretty sure of choosing a
successful affiliate program from them.
4. Look for affiliate programs that are offered through any ezines you receive. Chances are the ezine owner has an
affiliate program and if they have a good ezine they probably will have a good affiliate program.
5. Think of things that ALWAYS sell. Like web site design, ebooks, music and travel. Stick to proven online sellers and the affiliate program will have a much greater chance of being successful.
6. Seek out articles on affiliate programs. There are many good writers out there who have been successful with affiliate programs. Try to find articles they have written to see what
has worked for them.
7. Take courses. Many sites offer free online email courses for affiliates. Take some of these courses to learn more about what it takes to be a successful affiliate.
Affiliate programs are a great way to make money but one of the secrets to affiliate success is to choose the right program in the first place. Use these 7 tips to help you succeed.
