The Truth About Affiliate Programs

Written by Elena Fawkner


The Truth About Affiliate Programs

© 2002 Elena Fawkner

Affiliate programs are a brilliant idea. Forrepparttar owner of repparttar 106619 product, they're a way of recruiting a veritable army of salespeople to promote your product without having to pay them a dime unless and until they generate a sale. Forrepparttar 106620 affiliate, they're a great way of earning extra cash from an existing, high-traffic website with virtually zero additional effort.

Only problem is, most affiliates don't HAVE an existing, high-traffic website and they're suckered into thinking that it's a simple matter of signing up for an affiliate program and "driving traffic" torepparttar 106621 product owner's site using a uniquely-coded URL. Well, it IS that simple. And it isn't.

If you don't already have your own high-traffic website, how do you think you're going to drive traffic torepparttar 106622 product owner's site inrepparttar 106623 hope of generating a sale?

Well, there are a few ways, actually. And all of them are going to cost you either time or money.

First off, you're going to have to spend money on advertising. How much? Well, consider this. Estimates vary but, roughly, only 2-4% of people who see your ad will actually click on your link. Of that 2-4%, only 1% or so of THEM will go on to buy. In addition, it takes, on average, 7 or 8 exposures to your ad before people will click on it. AND to achieve even these piddly numbers your market must be targeted inrepparttar 106624 first place. This is, as you can see, nothing but a numbers game. Pure and simple.

So what does all this mean to you,repparttar 106625 advertiser without a website? Well, to start with you're going to want to advertise where a LOT of people are going to see your ad. But not just ANY people. People interested inrepparttar 106626 product you're wanting to sell - your target market. So this cuts outrepparttar 106627 free classifieds and FFAs. And it means you're going to have to spend advertising dollars.

Where do you go to advertise then? The most effective form of advertising is in ezines. Take mine, for example. Atrepparttar 106628 time of writing, my subscriber database is around 14,000. Each week I run an ad for my own opportunity (in addition to running ads from other paying advertisers). I generally get about 500 click-throughs overrepparttar 106629 course of repparttar 106630 2 or 3 days following publication. That's a click-through rate of about 3.6%, about in line withrepparttar 106631 average.

If you were to pay to advertise in my ezine, it would cost you $70 for a single classified based on my $5 CPM ($5 per every 1,000 subscribers) pricing formula. This is not an uncommon formula for pricing ezine advertising. You're therefore paying around 14 cents per click. That's not bad.

Other than that, what can you do? Well, you can choose to spend time rather than money. An obvious choice considering what I've just said is to start your OWN ezine.

Build your own list and over time you will have a large subscriber database to put your ad in front of too ... and it won't cost you a dime. But this takes time and it takes work. It's taken me two and a half years to build a list of 14,000 subscribers. And it takes a few hours of work to put togetherrepparttar 106632 ezine itself including writingrepparttar 106633 feature article. Every week, week in, week out. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

The Fear Factor

Written by Sharon Davis


My brother-in-law is inrepparttar process of starting a home business. In fact, he's been inrepparttar 106618 process of starting it for over 2 years now.

It seems that Bill (that's not really his name, but I don't want to embarrass him), is afraid to takerepparttar 106619 big step.

He wasn't afraid to takerepparttar 106620 first step. He's taken lots of steps. He's going to be selling a product, so he's done some really important (and expensive) groundwork like designing his product, testing it, getting a patent, getting a business license, setting up his accounting procedures and even designing his website.

Bill spent alot of time on his website (he's a bit of a perfectionist). I've offered to get him up and running onrepparttar 106621 web, submit it torepparttar 106622 search engines, and basically handlerepparttar 106623 website administration for him.

About 2 months ago, his site was all set and I've been waiting for his go ahead to "go live" ever since. Whenever I ask him if he's ready, he has a vague reason for not going ahead: "I need to make more of model x" or "I've decided to redesign a few things onrepparttar 106624 website".

It has become clear to me that Bill is afraid of failure (or even his own success).

This is an all to common situation among would-be business owners. Let's face it-- it's a pretty scary thing to be completely responsible for your own livelyhood. In fact, this fear is oftenrepparttar 106625 one thing that keeps a person from realizing their dream of having a home business.

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