3 Tips To Affiliate Program Success

When it comes to promoting affiliate programs, most affiliate marketers follow a pretty standard process.

First, it’s off to Google and search “affiliate programs.” In the displayed results, we look for "high paying" affiliate programs, and by "high paying" I mean those who pay 25%+ commissions.

Next, it’s time to check out all the websites listed and then join the programs. Remember, affiliate programs are free to join. We put all sorts of banners and text ads on our links page and expect to see a cheque (or in Webster’s, it’s check) in our mailbox the next morning.

NOT!!!

Let’s look at this process again. Let us revise the process:

Step 1. Search for affiliate programs with your favourite search engine. Look for only those affiliate programs that have products that interest you. For example if you are interested in "radio controlled airplanes" then look for such products first. Don't start with promoting "herbal shampoos" or "yoga cd's" just because they pay 40% commissions.

Since you already know a little about remote control, or RC planes, it will be much easier for you to promote various aspects of the product.

So when selecting the affiliate program keep in mind the following sequence

a) Products that you know about or are interested in.

b) Quality of the product. To know the quality of the product it is advisable to buy the product yourself first.

c) The organization associated with the product. Look for the promotional material they are giving to affiliates. This shows the manufacturer's confidence in their product.

d) Commission structure. Some webmasters provide 2-tier commission structure. Some have a threshold amount before the affiliates get paid.

Step 2. Design a simple landing page to "presell" the product before sending your visitors to the actual sales page. This step is extremely important. Why do you need to presell the product? Again, because this is Internet. No one knows you here or has seen you personally.

Normally when someone buys over the Internet he/she is going to look for similar products before he gets to the final decision. If he comes to your affiliate-landing page, it becomes much easier for him to compare the product you want to promote with 4-5 other products in the category.

The landing page you have designed can have testimonials, which you can borrow from the sales page. It can also contain your own experience about the product. You can use before/after situations for describing the benefits of the product. You can use photographs of yourself using the product successfully. This adds instant credibility to the product you want to promote.

Step 3. When the visitors reach your landing page you must have a system to capture their names and email addresses. By capturing email addresses you can "follow up" with your subscribers later, using newsletters or product features using email autoresponders.

The best way to capture email addresses is to provide a free gift related to the product. This free gift can be an e-book written by you or many webmasters already have an e-book written for the affiliates. So again, this is a very important point, join only those programs where you will find a decent promotional material already prepared for the affiliates.

These are just some of the things you need to keep in mind as you build an online business using the affiliate marketing model.