How to choose an affiliate program

Some of the factors you should consider.

1. Make money from the product ?

Don't be swayed just by high commission figures or multi-tier payments. You need positive answers to both these two questions

• Is it a product that people want and will buy ? Consider how it will fare alongside the competition.
• Is the commission rate sufficient to make your efforts worthwhile.

2. Effective sales page

Visit the sales page of the product to confirm that the sales copy does a good job of selling the product. Be aware of the various ways that can lose out on your commission. (These are explained in the following tip in this section.)

3. Affiliate support

The merchant should provide you with much more than just a link to join the affiliate program. Check for any useful promotional material - sample ads, articles, solo mailings, endorsements/reviews, signatures

Ideally there will be an affiliate mailing list so that the merchant can convey useful news. You want someone reliable who won't disband a program or make rule changes without telling you.

4. How many affiliate programs should you promote ?

If you plan to put a number of affiliate products on one page then the more you have the more diluted the effect. The exception being if they all relate to the same topic.

Otherwise if you keep them separate you can have as many as you like but do not underestimate the work involved for you on the administration side such as

• different procedures for signing up
• different ways of creating affiliate links
• different methods of payments, at different intervals
• handling ongoing communications from every program

A good compromise is to use a company which contains many affiliate programs under one umbrella. They consolidate your commissions into one payment and have a standardized format for affiliate links with no individual sign-ups required.

The most popular of these, handling digital products (ebooks, software), is ClickBank.

And here is an outstanding FREE tool which will let you search through the ClickBank Marketplace and see full information and ranking history for any product.

Beware, how you can lose commission

As an affiliate you want the visitor to read through the sales page and hit that order button with you getting credit for the sale. There are a number of reasons why this does not happen

1. There is an overt link to an affiliate sign up page. So your potential customer could simply become an affiliate and purchase the product through his own link.

2. There are many external links which distract the visitor from reaching the order page.

3. The merchant captures your commission, for example

• There are offers to join a mailing list or claim a free report: you should get credited for any sale ensuing from these leads but an unscrupulous merchant may follow up and make the sale via his own link.
• Similarly the merchant may use a pop-up upon exiting a site to convert a leaving visitor into a sale for which you do not get the credit.

4. Your product is just one of many unrelated products on a page - a put-off for the potential customer.

5. Remember ClickBank mentioned previously?

If you are a ClickBank affiliate and the merchant offers multiple payment options (such as Paypal) then if ClickBank is not chosen you do not get the commission.

Never link direct to an affiliate site

You should never openly use the URL that an affiliate program provides for you.

You should link instead to a page on your own site which then leads to the affiliate program.

The reasons ?

1. On this page you can provide your own introduction to the product or service you are promoting. This can include, for example:

- additional detail not available in your posting or advert
- your own personal experience
- a review of the benefits

2. You can provide links to the rest of your site in case your visitor is not interested in that affiliate product.

3. Your own site traffic statistics will indicate the response to your advert in addition to any stats provided for you by the affiliate company.

4. You can submit the page to search engines.

5. With the real URL visible there is a risk that the reader removes the suffix (agent code) so that you do not get registered as the affiliate agent

6. If the affiliate operation becomes discontinued you can inform and divert visitors at your own website, rather than have them visit a non-existent page.

Provide a review to promote your products

By far the best way to promote a product is to provide a review which clearly shows that you have read it, in the case of a book, or used it if it is a software tool.

If you avoid the standard format and provide an imaginative review coupled with genuine enthusiasm your reader should be convinced - as I hope you will find from one of my actual reviews below.

Provide a review to promote your products

By far the best way to promote a product is to provide a review which clearly shows that you have read it, in the case of a book, or used it if it is a software tool.

If you avoid the standard format and provide an imaginative review coupled with genuine enthusiasm your reader should be convinced - as I hope you will find from one of my actual reviews below.

Put all your reviews on ONE page

If you plan to have reviews of several products at your site then consider putting them all on one page.

Why ?

Well, quite obviously, it gives the visitor a chance to see your other offerings should he not be interested in the one you directed him to.

Why you should conceal affiliate URLs - and how

It's a proven fact that many customers will not click on an affiliate URL at your site.

Maybe they resent seeing commission paid to an affiliate, maybe they feel less security when buying from an affiliate.

So, suppose they see a link looking like this in the browser status bar

http://www.abc.com/123

where '123' is your affiliate code.

They may decide to bypass the affiliate code and just type in the home page URL

http://www.abc.com

And that means you lose out on the commission.

Here is how to conceal not only the affiliate code but anything about that URL which may indicate it is an affiliate link. Use some Javascript.

< a href="http://......"
onmouseover=
"window.status='ABC';
return true;"
onmouseout=
"window.status=' ';
return true;" >

Then 'ABC' will show in the browser status bar instead of the URL.

Watch out for commission theft

Certain affiliate link formats are not 'protected'.

In other words they have a simple format such as

http://www.abc.com/123

and if you display that in an email type message, for example in a newsletter, then your reader can substitute his own affiliate code and claim commission on his own purchase.

So you need to protect (or disguise) your link, and there are a few ways to do this

• Use a redirect file
• Use a 'short URL' service
• Use an ad tracking link

These may only partly eliminate the problem, the affiliate code might still be visible at the affiliate site.

The ideal solution therefore is to use an affiliate cloaking tool.

Getting the edge over rival affiliates

Here are two ways to stay ahead of the competition

1. Your potential customer may have visited several sites, all promoting the same affiliate programs as yours, before deciding to purchase.
   
   So what can you do to do to convince him to return to your site and buy ?
   
   You announce a special offer, stating that you will provide a bonus (give details) if they buy from you. Tell them to send details of the receipt after purchase.
   
   
2. As an affiliate, once your visitor clicks on your affiliate link, you have lost him.

If he visits the product site and decides he is not interested there is no way you can get in touch and persuade him.

And even if he does purchase there are some affiliate programs which don't reveal the name of the customer so you would be unable to follow up with further promotions.

So is there a way you can make contact ?

Yes - you should offer a free report or free ebook which presells the product. You then have the contact details and can do whatever follow up is necessary.