The Project Brief. You should meet, in person or over phone, with your marketing firm to discuss raw thoughts and ideas. This is not a brainstorming session, but rather an information gathering meeting to see that you are in sync. Through a simple Q&A, you should be able to gather all information necessary to establish goals, timeframe, and budget. From this information, your marketing firm should produce a creative work plan.

The Proposal. Using information gathered, your marketing firm should prepare a proposal for your approval. This should outline development, production and delivery costs and schedules. Development. Once you have approved proposal, development of your strategy and creative content begins. The process should go something like this:

1. Two initial concepts are presented for your review.

2. A consultation is held to discuss direction to be taken.

3. A single revised design is submitted for your review.

4. Together, you determine if concept effectively meets goals of project, and your marketing plan.

5. A revised proof is presented for your review.

6. You proof job for accuracy and state any corrections.

7. The final proof is presented for your review.

8. You proof job for accuracy and give your approval.

9. The marketing firm checks job for technical quality and sends it into production.

Production. When development stage is complete, design will be submitted to vendors for firm production and delivery costs and, upon your approval, project is sent into production. If project is out of budget, marketing firm should make necessary adjustments at no additional cost to you.

Delivery. This is final stage. Whether it's a mailing, a billboard, or magazine ad, this is where message is delivered to your audience.

Another source of information resides in ebooks and ezine articles that have already been written on subject of affiliate programs and affiliate marketing. You can locate these ebooks and articles by using search engines. Do not hesitate to communicate with authors. Work with authors because it may help you in your quest for usable information. You may find some authors willing to discuss your specific concerns since it may provide them with useful material for their future use.

In process of performing your research, you will be compiling a lot of hand-written notes and web page printouts of potential affiliate programs. Furthermore, you will probably accumulate material on your computer’s hard drive of website pages on affiliate programs that you had an interest in performing a follow-up analysis upon.

The process of research is not only time consuming but also may consume some of your money. How much money you spend depends on types of programs you are considering. Furthermore, you may have to join a program or purchase something (for example, buy ebook that is being promoted) in order to get information you need for your review and evaluation phase. You should always ask for a free copy – it does not hurt to try.

Keep yourself organized by putting paper information (hand-written notes and web page printouts) into 3-ring binders. Use tab inserts to separate each affiliate program. Each tab insert should be labeled with an appropriate affiliate program title. This will enable easy identification of each program in binder and access to detailed data.

The next step is to make a “summary table” that includes each affiliate program you are considering. The summary table should contain information on each affiliate program such as: name of program, URL website, definition of what program offers to affiliate, description of what is offered to customer of product, cost of program to customer, commission payable to affiliate, description of downline sales commissions (if any), training available to affiliate by owner of product, sales material available to affiliate, etc.

Next, you need to review, evaluate and compare various affiliate programs at a summarized level. This is phase of utilizing all information that you collected, categorized and organized during search phase. This process can now be accomplished with considerably less stress and anxiety than just looking at a list of affiliate programs.

You now have important and essential information (that fulfills your needs) necessary to make an informed decision. The summary table provides you with data to compare different affiliate opportunities (whether it is only two or many).

At this point, your review and evaluation process will probably lead to more questions. However, your questions should now be very targeted. Any follow-up research you need to perform to obtain answers should be highly focused.

Make certain you communicate with owner of each affiliate program to gain as much knowledge as possible about respective affiliate program. The owner of program should be anxious to hear your questions and help you since it could result in increased revenue to owner. Make your questions as direct and to point as possible to uncover your deepest concerns.

Finally, what did you achieve or learn from your search of ebooks and ezine articles on topic of affiliate topics? Use this information in your decision process. You should communicate with author(s) if you found something of interest that can help you in your eventual decision. The author(s) should also be willing to talk to you since it could result in material for future ebooks they might write.

I hope you find this information valuable and worth your time in reading. A decision based on having appropriate information is definitely worth more than a decision made by “guessing.” This article is just beginning. You will find your niche in affiliate programs by performing a proper research, review and comparison of available programs before making your informed decision. Good luck in your quest to find right affiliate program(s) for your future personal and financial success.

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