You have spent many hours slaving away building your dream website and now you want to make an income from it. Selling affiliate products is probably, by far the easiest way to earn an income online. With affiliate products you refer a buyer or potential buyer to a merchant’s website where they can purchase a good or service. The visitor is tracked through an affiliate network and if a sale is made, a commission or percentage of the sale is paid to you for your trouble.
Which Network To Choose
As with all industries there are reputable and non reputable companies that operate in the sector. The hard part is working out whether the affiliate network company is trustworthy or not. As affiliate networks are internet based businesses, some companies may try to hide behind the invisible cloud and operate in a dishonest manner. However the internet is a powerful resource. Before joining an affiliate network do some research on the net. You may find good and bad reports written by others about their experiences with various companies. It is better to learn from the mistakes of others than having to suffer an ill fate yourself.
Fees
Most affiliate networks allow publishers to join for free. If the affiliate network is asking you for a fee, assess the following:
1. How much is the fee.
2. Is the fee recurring or is it a one off registration.
3. How long do you think it will take you to recoup the fee you have paid to join. If the fee is only a few dollars, it won’t take long. If the fee is $50 per month you will need to ensure you are generating enough sales to cover this cost, or you will be making a loss before you start.
4. Are the merchants that are affiliated with this network worth the fee, or are the same merchants available on another network that is free to join.
Available Merchants
Before joining an affiliate network you should be able to review the merchants they have on their books. It is important to check the merchants available as these will be the businesses you will promoting on your website. Are the merchants that are available selling products that are inline with the genre of your site. You need to keep asking yourself, if I was the site visitor, would I be interested in buying the item that you are advertising for sale? Or is the item totally unrelated to the rest of the site. Some affiliate networks are quite specific with the type of merchants they advertise, for example merchants from the financial sector.
Getting Paid
This is the most important item to check as money in the bank is the whole idea of selling the products. Some affiliate networks require you to make a minimum amount in commissions before they will make a payment to you. This can be as low as $30 in some cases. Some affiliate networks pay fortnightly and others pay monthly if the minimum amount has been earned. This is important so you can budget you cash flow.
You can easily make a comfortable income by selling products through an affiliate network. The advantages of this include the fact you do not have to worry about guaranteeing the product, product returns or customer complaints. Just ensure you research the affiliate networks before promoting their products.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Small Scale Affiliate Marketing
By: Shikina | 22-07-2008
I'm looking to establish a direct affiliate relationship between myself (the affiliate) and one specific retailer that I deal with regularly. They're not looking for any other affiliates other than myself, but I need this to be a software-based solution. Anybody know of any generic code out there that I could modify and pass off to the partner? Are there any other solutions that don't involve paying huge upfront costs, or a recurring commission to a 3rd party network? Your help is greatly appreciated!
Affiliate sites
By: 043160415 | 24-03-2008
hellowhere can i fined a wed that can generate a list of affiliate sites or directory that can give me the best affiliate sites in diferent countrs? if you have any recommendations of how to fined a quality list, please contect me...thanks shiri@eteacher.co.il
What are the leading e-commerce affiliate programs for bloggers and social network profile pages?
By: Kuchmuch | 29-10-2007
What are the leading e-commerce affiliate programs for bloggers and social network profile pages?
Do affiliate programs work? Can a person make a ...
By: vsekgothe | 18-08-2007
Do affiliate programs work? Can a person make a living out of it? How does one do opt-in e-mails?
What is a solid web marketing budget?
By: tenwhisk | 15-05-2007
Hii would like to get a ball park figure as to how much it would cost to market/advertise a new site, meaning what is considered a good budget for a meaningful, strong web marketing campaign? S.E.O, affiliate programs, links in the right places, banner ads etc...
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