Affiliate programs are a great means of earning some handy cash; but not all affiliate programs are profitable. Some will only take up your time and energy and some others may even spoil your website reputation. This is why you got to carefully select your affiliate marketing programs and make sure that they work for you same as your work for them. Given below are a few points that will help you make better decision in choosing an affiliate program that works for you rather than working only for affiliate merchant.

Points to take into consideration before selecting an affiliate program

1.) Your website and your visitors

If you already have a website, make sure to go for affiliate programs that jell with your website theme. If your website is about cars then promoting cycle related products is going to have very less or no impact.

Secondly finding and scrutinizing your visitors and your target market is a good idea. In any affiliate program, your visitor is one who is going to get you returns. So primarily get to know your visitors. Analyze your visitor behavior using your website statistics before deciding on which affiliate program to go for. Your objective should be to find out what your visitors are looking for and then promote products of their interest which also match with your existing products or services (if any).

2.) Affiliate merchant’s website

Most affiliates don’t give much importance to affiliate merchant’s website, forgetting fact that here’s where actual sales conversion is to take place. It’s very important that affiliate merchant’s website is designed to sell. So check and make sure that merchant’s website is free from unwanted banner advertisements/pop-ups and focus on affiliate product.

Other important things to check out are sales copy, privacy policy, product guarantees, after sales service and special discounts/offers available with product/service. Your main aim must be to find out if product/service features would actually prompt referred visitor to make a purchase.

Some affiliate merchants promote more than one product/service on a webpage which can dilute conversion rate. It is best to go for affiliate programs that focus on a single product/service per webpage.

3.) Quality of goods/services

Just imagine how you would feel, if you were referred by a website to a product that turned out to be of inferior quality? Your visitors will feel same way about your website if you promote inferior or overly priced goods/services. Always make sure to know about product/service you are planning to promote. Check for testimonials and references from existing customers to find out about quality of goods. If possible you can even plan on using them yourself to be on safer side. In addition, also make sure to compare similar products available over internet for features and rates.

There are many products that have trial periods or return policies associated with them. Products having return policies can increase conversion rate but may also lead to debiting in case of a chargeback. Promoting products sold on a trial period basis requires cookie detection to track sales at end of period which is very unreliable. So it’s better to confirm with affiliate merchant tracking method used or affiliate payment scheme, in case products have trial periods.

4.) Reputation of affiliate merchant

The reputation of affiliate merchant is important because odds are against you. There are chances that some affiliate merchants may not payout or make deductions to your actual payments. So make sure to find out using references about affiliate merchant’s history of making proper payments.

Already existing affiliates of affiliate merchant are your best source of information. In addition be sure to read their business literature to get an idea about their history of past and present operations.

5.) Commission scheme of affiliate program

There are many different types of commission schemes that affiliate programs use to reward their affiliates. Some of most popular ones are pay per click, pay per lead and pay per sale schemes. Some others even offer two tiered and multi tiered commission schemes. Some commission schemes can even be a mix and match of above.

In case of a pay per click/hit scheme minimum commission that you can expect is $0.5 to $0.10 per click. For pay per sale a good commission rate would be 15% to 50%. Some companies even offer lifetime commissions, but as most of them are based on cookie identification, they may not work out well.

With competition increasing almost all merchants have started offering two tiered commissions, some even offer multi tiered ones. Joining these schemes can give you a chance to get paid for direct sales you make and also for sales made by affiliates referred by you.