How To Select An Affiliate ProgramCopyright © F. Terrence Markle – All Rights Reserved
Are you having difficulties in selecting an internet affiliate program to join and promote? Too many opportunities to sort through? Uncertain of your next step? Guess what – you are not alone. Join
crowd! You will probably find road full of potholes in your research, review and selection of right affiliate program for you.
You should consider following steps to help you make decision on which affiliate program to join and promote. First, you need to find affiliate programs that are available for you to join and promote. Second, you need to sort through all these opportunities to learn details of each affiliate program. Third, you need to select a program (or programs) that fits your wants and needs (whatever they may be).
I am making basic assumption that you want to select a program that will result in cash flowing into your pocket rather than flowing out of your pocket. Look out for potholes in road. There are a lot of them out there. You should keep in mind that most affiliate program will not make any promises regarding your future potential earnings or lack of earnings. Warning – Avoid any program that makes promises that seem unrealistic or too good to be true.
You should review a wide selection of affiliate programs before you decide which program (or programs) is right for you. As painful as it sounds, you need to do research before making any decision. You should perform sufficient (and not necessarily exhaustive) research to understand what programs exist and what they provide to affiliate (promoter/seller) and customer (buyer). The amount of research you perform depends on what you need to make an informative decision.
The process of research is probably most painful and yet most educational part of setting up an online internet business. Do not cut it short because you will probably pay for it dearly in different ways at a later date. This includes spending unnecessary money, pursuing wrong marketing paths and just plain wasting your time and energy.
It is essential to perform thorough research if you are going to profit from any promotional effort of an affiliate program. It is an established fact that commercial success starts with having a product to sell (hopefully a product that provides value, usefulness and/or happiness to buyer of product). It is another well known fact that economics picture is not complete without a seller and a buyer that are willing and able to sell and buy product. Warning - Do not get involved with an affiliate program where it is uncertain what comprises actual product being sold.
Many factors, including selling price of product and total cost of product (potential costs include manufacturing, storing, distributing, marketing, and selling), need to be evaluated to determine if a profit can be made on promotion and sale of an affiliate product. As a side note, difference between financial success and failure could be a simple matter of promoting a product that has more appeal or intrinsic value to potential buyer than cost of product.
The research process should consist of gathering sufficient information on potential opportunities that will enable you to make an informed decision on what affiliate program(s) to join and promote. You will need to devote precious time and energy to accomplish this phase of affiliate selection process.
In order to locate affiliate opportunities, you should start by using a national search engine. Select “key words” in your search (such as: affiliate opportunities, affiliate ebook, affiliate networks, affiliate income, affiliate marketing, etc) to locate opportunities. Be innovative and change search word(s) to match your personal needs and interest.
You should probably direct your attention to top 10 to 20 search results for any key word group since these are likely to be websites with highest level of internet traffic. Higher traffic is an indicator that website gets visitors and is probably in demand. Demand is important since it is one part of economic “demand versus supply” equation.
Write down appropriate information from each website that will provide you with data to review after you complete your online searching. You should probably print out sales letter and any other useful information that will help in your follow-up review and evaluation. Part of your research will include communicating with owner of each website that you are considering.
In addition, join some of internet discussion boards and chat rooms that discuss topic of affiliate programs. This can potentially provide a wealth of information in your review and comparison process. You can use search engines to find these discussion boards and chat rooms.
