Harness your passionThere are dozens, hundreds – maybe even thousands – of different ways for imaginative people to launch an Internet business. One way which works well for many people is to concentrate on a small niche. Choose a topic in which you are passionately interested, and create a web site around that theme. Then select affiliate programs which closely fit the theme of your site and blend them into the site, using text links and banners (normally supplied by the affilaite program). If possible, write about the products from first-hand knowledge, so that you become a respected, credible source of reliable information. The more targeted your traffic, the more likely it is that people will buy. The huge advantage of basing a business on a topic in which you are passionately interested is that you will enjoy running your business – it will be much more like a fascinating hobby than a job. Select your targetHere's what the professionals do. Before they do anything else, they decide to whom they are going to sell products to. DON'T select the product first. Select your target audience first. Be precise. Zero in on a group of people with a particular interest or problem. Now ask yourself: Where do they gather? What magazines or ezines do they read? What web sites do they visit? What email discussion groups do they subscribe to? How can you approach them? Is it easy to get in front of their eyeballs? You're looking for an easily identifiable target. There's no sense in building a web site and then trying to figure out how to attract your audience. Do it the other way round. Decide who your audience is and then build your web site. Sell products which are in high demandIt sounds so simple, doesn't it? In fact, it's so simple it's very easy to overlook. Sell things that people want. Information products are good to sell because that's mainly what people use the Internet for – to seek information. Digital products have high profit margins and often have high commissions. Bargains are always in demand. Coupon sites which offer the latest bargains are labor-intensive but have proved profitable. This is a highly competitive field now. Jumping on new products and the latest fads can also reap rewards for the agile. An Ernst & Young study found that the most popular products bought online are: Computer related products (40%) Books (20%) Travel (16%) Clothing (10%) Recorded Music and Subscriptions (6%) Gifts (4%) Investment (4%) Get paid – without salesIn some cases, your visitors don't even have to buy anything. If they fill out a survey, ask for a free report, ask for a free sample or perhaps download software to try, you get paid. You need lots of trafficIf you already have a busy site and the product you choose to promote is attractive to your visitors, you should start earning money straight away. If you have a new, low-traffic site, you have a lot of work ahead of you. Several times I've seen suggestions that to make reasonable money from a web site you need at least 500 unique visitors a day. That seems about right if you have a very tightly targeted audience – and also have a newsletter which gives you more income and helps remind people about your site. Some web site owners laugh at the 500-a-day figure and say you need at least five times that figure. Numbers alone aren't enough – you need to build trust and credibility. Merely attracting traffic isn't enough. You have to learn how to encourage people to click on the links and buy something. So make sure you promote really good products. Aim for residual incomeSome merchants who charge their customers monthly or yearly fees pay affiliates residual commissions. When will you be paid?Some companies pay you only after you have accumulated $50 or $100 in commission. If you have a very busy site, that's OK. For a small site without much traffic, it could take a long, long time . . . There's even the odd company which won't pay you at all unless you generate a certain level of business. Read the affiliate agreement before you sign up. Rule number 1: Go for qualityThe most important consideration when assessing associate programs is to examine the product or service offered. The better the product or service, the more enthusiastic you will be about recommending it – and you'll have a better chance that people will want to buy. Beware of anyone who raves on about the money you can make and forgets to tell you about the product or service. The sales blurb can be tempting, but make sure you don't promote something which will harm your reputation. Earn good commissionsRemember, those links and banners are helping persuade people to leave your site – away from the products or services you're selling. So look for programs which reward you generously. Of course, high commissions alone are useless if people don't buy when they reach the site. As well as using products and services which match the theme of your site, it makes sense to experiment and see what interests your visitors. Seek good trackingWhen you experiment with your promotional efforts you want to know straight away how effective your work has been, so you need immediate, or real-time, tracking. You want to be able to see quickly which of your promotions work and which ones don't. Then you can increase your sales and commissions by concentrating on the things that work. Look for LIFETIME commissionsImagine you set up a bookshop as an associate of Amazon. Someone visits your site and – hey! you're in luck – buys a book. You earn 5% or 15% from Amazon. Next time, however, that customer will probably just go straight to Amazon, and might buy $100 worth of books. You won't receive a cent on that purchase. (Amazon has a good program but there's a weasel clause in its contract. If you send people to buy a particular book at Amazon and they click around and then buy something else, you will earn only 5% instead of 15%. Also, if they click around, delay a decision, and return next week and buy, you won't earn anything from that purchase. That's unfair. A few programs DO pay you for the second and third and fourth etc purchase by the customer, and this is true for almost all the Online Gaming affiliate programs Don't lose the plotSome web site owners sign up for dozens of programs and clutter their site with them so much that it's difficult to see the theme of the site. Affiliate programs consultant Declan Dunn calls this the flea market approach. Other webmasters try banner farms – - sites which are a sea of banners. Don't waste your time. If you want your visitors to keep coming back, your site needs to have an obvious, memorable reason for its existence. Some web site owners have reported success with programs totally unrelated to their site's theme. My experience has been the exact opposite, so I prefer companies which have products or services which complement my site, although I occasionally experiment with others. Beware of sharksSome web site owners don't put their name and address on their sites. Ask yourself: What are they ashamed of? What do they have to hide? There are sharks out there in murky waters. Be wary. Ask for references While researching the company before you sign up, it's a good idea to ask for the names of associates and contact them to see if they're happy with the company. A vendor will usually offer a carefully worded, detailed agreement. If the vendor doesn't, be careful. However, don't rule out a company completely just because it doesn't have a slick public relations exercise. You could be overlooking a really talented tech wizard. How professional are they? If the vendor is slow replying to your email, that's also a warning sign. I've found that the most successful companies on the Net are often amazingly fast at replying to email. Get your own domain nameYou can promote revenue sharing programs from a free site, but you create a much more professional image if you get your own domain name. You'll also receive more repeat traffic if you have a memorable name. Show people you're serious. Grab your domain name now before someone else does. It's getting harder and harder to find a good .com name. Start collecting domain names Personal endorsements increase salesAn excellent way to increase your click-through rate and sales is to write a personal endorsement praising the product or service – so make sure you sign up with companies which have excellent products. If you haven't tried the product, perhaps you can get an endorsement from a friend who has. However, successful affiliates buy the product so that they can write a genuine, honest review of it. That works beautifully. The worst ways to do itThe dumbest way to promote a program is to use spam – bulk unsolicited email. You can wreck your reputation, lose your Internet connection, forfeit any commissions you've earned, and the company may even bill you for the time it has wasted dealing with complaints about you. Don't say you weren't warned! Selfish, inconsiderate oafs use spam. The laziest way isn't the best Web site owners doing very well with associate programs usually don't just paste in a banner and wait hopefully for the money to roll in. They write endorsements, provide useful content, offer helpful advice . . . in all sorts of creative ways they weave the links and graphics into the content on their sites. Watch for exclusivity clausesSome companies have an exclusivity clause (they want to be the only retailer of that type on your site), some allow only graphical links, and some want to approve every word you write before you promote them – more good reasons for reading the contract. Appropriate linking increases sales Some companies provide you with just a link to their main page. Others let you link to various pages, categories or individual products on their site. Linking to categories may be OK. Linking directly to an individual product is usually much more effective. Look for companies which HELP affiliates Some affiliate merchants seem to forget about you after you've signed up. Others work hard to help you succeed. I strongly recommend that you join affiliate programs run by highly successful Internet marketers, even if you don't plan to promote their products. You'll learn a heap of useful tips from their newsletters and by studying what they do. You'll need a newsletter If you don't have your own newsletter, you're severely handicapping yourself. Now is the time to get started. If you build up your circulation by providing mainly useful information, a newsletter is a superb promotional tool, and a superb money-generating tool Experienced, successful marketers always place a lot of importance on building their opt-in lists because they know that it gives them the opportunity to make repeat sales. If you're keen, you can increase your sales and commissions even more by creating not just one newsletter but MANY opt-in lists for different audiences. How to use message boards/forums |
Things to Consider when becoming an affiliate
Below are a few guidlines for helping you decide if you would like to become an affiliate marketer, and if so, some points to ponder on before you start. These should help get you in the right direction to becoming an affiliate