Make Money From Affiliate Programs

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS DIRECTORY

2007-03-25T18:38:00.000+07:00

AFFILIATE PROGRAMS DIRECTORY

Affiliate programs are the ideal way to make your web site profitable. There is such a huge range of web affiliate programs now available to suit you and your site. Now you can choose one of several affiliate programs that were offered by me. Sign up Today!

1. Forex-Affiliate.Com - Earn thousands of $$$ !!!

Thousands of affiliates cannot be wrong! The Forex (currency trading) industry is the world's biggest market on earth, with a daily turnover of 2.5 trillion dollars! Forex-Affiliate.Com joins forces with Easy-Forex™ Trading Platform, a world leader in online currency trading. We have affiliates that are making over $100,000 USD per month why not join it's free and easy we will guide you every step of the way.
Earn Up To $10,000 USD Per Referral!!!

Professional advertising materials (Banners, Text Links, & More)
Accurate and reliable statistics, tracking, reporting and display.
Fast and reliable cash and commission payments.
24x7 Personal account management, for all affiliates.
Payment options available include Wire Transfer & Paypal.
Highest conversion rate than any other Forex Program!!!
2Tier Program Refer Affiliates for up to $25 Per Sign Up.
CPA - Up to $300 USD
Revenue Share - Up to 30%
Registration is free. Click Here to sign up now.

2. Lunarpages Web Hosting

Veteran affiliates highly recommend Lunarpages Web Hosting because they are simply the best in the industry! Lunarpages is VERY responsive to the needs of their customers as well as their affiliates! Lunarpages' phenomenal service, outstanding support, and high retention rate assures an affiliate continued commissions.
'Just look at what they have to offer! A Basic Hosting Plan with 35 GB of space and 800 GB of data transfer for only $6.95 a month.
The Lunarpages affiliate program pays a very generous $65 commission per referral and an additional $5 for every sale a second-tier affiliate generates. Highly recommended.. Click Here to sign up now.

3. Bravenet Affiliate Program
Join Bravenet - Free Websites and Web Tools to easily build or enhance your website. Bravenet Affiliate Program will give you $1 for each new active bravenet member that you refer to Bravenet. Recommended. Join today.Click Here to sign up and more information.

4. GenBucks affiliate program

GenBucks is the worlds leading affiliate program carrying products across many categories like Herbals (herbalzilla.com), Supplements, Electronics (scibody.com, musicplayerz.com), Men's Health Products and Bed & Bath. Genbucks is the best place to send your traffic to, with average conversions af 1:47,lots of products, tons of sites and templates, weekly payouts with no holdback, and free hosting it cant get better than this! Earn referral commissions, 3 levels deep. Recommended. Join today. Click Here for sign up and more information.

Herbalzilla

Scibody

Music Playerz

MAKING MONEY FROM AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

2007-03-25T17:34:00.000+07:00

Affiliate programs are a great way to generate income if you
don't have a product of your own to promote yet. You know
that already. But it's NOT, despite what you've heard, just a
simple matter of signing up for this or that affiliate program
and placing free and paid classified ads all over the place to
generate traffic to the website they give you or to get people
to click on your autoresponder link. There's more to it than
that. Much more.

When I started out in this business in May 1999, I signed up
for Cookie Cutter. Like many of you I thought that I could
simply absorb the information provided and then resell it to
others. I followed all the advice about advertising in other
people's ezines and all of that. I looked forward to some very
round numbers. Well, I got one alright. A big fat ZERO. And
that's how it stayed until I realized the truth. That if I was going
to make any money in this business I had to start from scratch.

In saying that, I don't want to take anything away from Cookie
Cutter. It was and is a marvellous product in terms of what it
can teach you in a very short period of time if you're starting
from ground zero. (Debate rages about its merits in terms of a
business opportunity but that's another story.)

In this article, I tell you what worked for me. It's nothing earth-
shattering or particularly profound. It's simply reality and
common sense. Here's what you need to do to make any
significant income from promoting other people's products.

YOU NEED A WEBSITE

Sorry, but yes, you do. A lot of people pushing their affiliate
program will tell you, if you ask the question "Do I need my
own website?", "No, you get this beautiful 25 page website
for free!" Great. How are you going to get people to visit it?
And how are you going to get people to visit YOUR
YouBeaut.com website in preference to everyone else's
YouBeaut.com website (all 50,000 of them)?

Well, let me tell you, the time, effort and expense you
would have to spend would be MUCH better invested in
your OWN unique and interesting website that will attract
traffic simply because it IS unique and interesting.

That said, you pick your affiliate programs to fit in with and
complement your website. Not the other way around. You do
NOT create your website to fit in with and complement your
affiliate programs. So, start with what you know, what interests
you, what you're passionate about. THAT should be the subject
matter of your website. Then, and only then, should you start
researching which affiliate programs out there fit in with the
website you have created. More about that later.

YOU NEED AN EZINE

You should support your website by publishing an ezine at
least on a monthly basis but preferably weekly. Why? A few
reasons:

First, it reminds your readers that your site exists (assuming
they signed up at your site in the first place) and hopefully
prompts them to visit again.

Second, you develop a targeted mailing list of subscribers
interested in the subject matter of your ezine and subscribers
that you can direct mail to (judiciously, of course).

Third, you can accept paid advertising in your ezine once it
hits 1000 subscribers or so and fourth, you can use it to
advertise your affiliate programs.

In addition, assuming you take your ezine publishing duties
seriously and it's not a mere regurgitation of other people's
articles without any purpose other than to keep your name in
front of an audience (and an ever-decreasing one it will be if that's
all you do), you can use it to develop your reputation as an
expert in your field by making the original articles you write for
your ezine available to a wider audience by submitting them to
other ezine publishers. Believe me, there's no shortage of ezine
publishers out there who rely exclusively on other people's work!

Establishing your own website and ezine takes serious time
and work. You can't build either in a weekend. It will take you
several weeks of effort to get it into good enough shape to take
it public (and even then you won't be satisfied but you have to
start at some point). And it will take several more weeks of
time and effort publicizing the fact that your website and ezine
exist and to start seeing some traffic trickling in.

SELECTING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

Once you have an established website and ezine, you can start
using them to promote your affiliate programs in a serious way.
You can, of course, start promoting affiliate programs from day
one, it's just that you won't see any results until you reach what
I think of as the "established" stage. By this I mean you have
a few hundred subscribers to your ezine and maybe a hundred
unique daily visitors to your website. These numbers are on the
very low end and your sales will reflect that but you'll at least be
on your way by this point.

Once you reach the "established" stage, you need to be very
selective about the affiliate programs you choose because you
are only going to select a very few of them and they need to be
good performers. Some internet marketing so-called experts
will tell you to pick one or two programs and market them
exclusively for big returns. That's good advice on one level -
it keeps you focused, and that's important - but on the other hand
you're at the mercy of the owner of the affiliate program. If they
go out of business so do you.

So, pick a small handful of programs to promote but make sure
they complement each other (so that someone who is interested
in one program is likely to be equally interested in the others).
It should be obvious but it bears stating - don't pick programs
that have no relevance to the subject matter of your site! Your
chances of selling to your website visitors are much higher if
what you sell is closely related to the subject matter of your
site. It was the subject matter of your site that attracted them in
the first place. They are already a qualified prospect if what you
sell from your site is relevant to that subject matter.

COMMISSION STRUCTURES

If you have a mega traffic site, then you can make up for in
volume what a particular program's commission structure
may lack in terms of straight dollars.

But if you have a lower traffic site, then you need to make sure
your traffic is very targeted, but go for higher commission
programs.

In other words, if you're a mega traffic site, by all means sign
up with Amazon.com and make maybe three bucks a sale.
If you make a hundred sales this week you've got three
hundred bucks you didn't have before. But if you're a lower
traffic site, focus on making just three sales a week of a
product that pays a hundred bucks a pop and you're even with
your mega traffic brethren in the commission stakes.

My current best selling program earns me $90 a sale. I
don't do anything different to promote that than I do the
program that makes me $20 a sale. If it takes the same amount
of time and effort to make a sale from each program, why wouldn't
I focus my energies on the $90 commission product?

Contrary to what many believe, it is no harder to sell a $247
product than it is to sell a $50 product. Don't prejudge your
audience. Make sure you offer programs that are relevant to
their interests (and which you're proud to promote - that should
go without saying but just in case ...) and the mere fact that
you're bringing targeted buyers and highly relevant products
together will do the rest, statistically speaking. Never, never
forget - making money in an online business is a numbers game,
pure and simple. Generate enough traffic and you'll generate
sales. But if you generate traffic that doesn't match your product
line, forget about it.

MISCELLANEOUS CONSIDERATIONS

To finish off, here's a few miscellaneous considerations to take
into account when selecting your affiliate programs.

=> How Long Do the Cookies Last?

Always go for programs that will credit you with the sale even
if the customer doesn't buy on the first visit. That high paying
program I mentioned above? 90% of the sales come from the
follow-up messages sent by the owner of the program once I
give him the lead.

That's pretty typical of all affiliate programs. You've heard that
it takes an average of seven exposures to a message before a
prospect will buy, right? Well, what happens to your
commissions if you only get paid for direct sales (i.e. where the
customer buys on the first visit following a direct link from your
site)? Right. You get maybe 10% of the commissions you
would have earned from the program if the customer was tagged
as yours for a period of time (and preferably for life).

Always read the terms and conditions of the affiliate program
carefully before investing your time and effort. If it says
anything like "if customer later makes a purchase on a repeat
visit that does not originate from your link, you will not qualify
for a commission on such sale" keep looking.

Some programs will place a cookie on the customer's hard disk
for 45 days or so which means that if that customer returns in
three weeks to eventually make a purchase, that customer will
be identified as "yours" and you will get the commission. Some
programs even offer "lifetime customers", that is, the customer is
yours for life even if they come back in three years time and buy
a completely different product.

=> Stats Reporting

Look for real-time reporting of statistics including hits and sales.
Then check to make sure that the hits the affiliate program
records are in line with your own stats tracking. This is easy
to do. I use Roibot to track all clicks I'm interested in
monitoring whether it's a program I'm promoting or whether I'm
just interested in how many people click on a particular link to
an article, for example. (To check out the Roibot suite of
marketing tools, click this (Roibot) link:
http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R5469_roibot ).

=> Frequency (and Amount) of Payments

Some programs will only pay once you accumulate a certain
amount of commission dollars. That's OK ... it keeps admin
costs down and therefore makes more of the profit available
for payment of generous commissions ... but if it's
disproportionately high compared to the amount of the base
commission, consider another program.

If it takes you a year to accumulate $50 in commissions, ask yourself how
likely is it that this particular company will still be around in one
year? Even if you have no concerns on that score, if it's
taking you a year to accumulate $50 worth of commissions,
this is not a program that's giving a particularly good return
on your investment of time and effort. Look for something
more productive.

=> How Long Established?

Related to the previous discussion, think twice before investing
too much time and effort on newly established programs. Add
these to your portfolio by all means, but make your staple
programs the tried and trues.

=> What is Their Policy on Spam?

Nothing irritates me more than to receive spam from someone
promoting one of the programs that I promote (well, OK, other
things do irritate me more but you get my point). Not because I
get into a tizz about spam per se (unlike apparently 90% of the
internet population I have more important things to worry about),
but such tactics bring the program into disrepute because it
suggests that the owner of the program condones spam and if
the owner of the program condones it, how much value does
he or she place on the program? Not much.

So look for programs with strict anti-spam policies.

SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE

Finally, a word about patience. This is a slow and steady wins
the race game as well as a numbers game. Don't spit the
dummy, throw in the towel, chuck the Glomesh onto the shagpile
(or whatever your vernacular equivalent of a dummy spit is)
because you don't make a single sale in your first month with a
new program.

By all means take a closer look at how well the product fits in
with the demographics of your audience (website and ezine) but
if it's a good fit, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
(enough with the metaphors already, OK).

Instead, refine your marketing approach, tweak your ads,
brainstorm for more creative ways of promoting the program.
Don't just write the program off as bad until you're sure it's not
going to work for you. There may be some peculiar demographic
factor common to your group that you're not aware of but until
you've given it a good try, don't assume that's the case.

As a general rule, so long as you're sure that the product is a
good fit, work with it for a year to give it a real chance of
performing for you. The internet landscape is strewn with the
carcasses of would-be successful entrepreneurs whose only
mistake was giving up too soon. Don't be one of them

By Elena Fawkner
Source : Affiliate Program Article from: AHome-BasedBusinessOnline.com

MAKE MONEY FROM AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

2007-03-25T16:51:00.000+07:00

OK, now you know what to look for in an affiliate program. Here's how to maximize your sales of those products and services and, therefore, your commissions:

Get Your Own Website

No ifs, no buts. DON'T rely on the you-beaut self-replicated job the company provides all its affiliates. Link to that site from your main site.

Get Your Own Domain Name

This presents a much more professional image. Many people won't give the time of day to a business that thinks so little of its prospects that the owner won't shell out 70 bucks for a domain name. So mean business and look like it.

Get Traffic To Your Site (Duh!)

As a rough guide, you will need at least 500 targeted unique visitors a day to your site to make reasonable money from affiliate programs.

You Must Have A Site That Will Attract Repeat Visitors

If your website is nothing more than a splash page consisting of little else other than banners for umpteen different affiliate programs, forget it. Your site must be worthy of your visitor's time and interest before you can even begin to think about converting that visitor into a paying customer. So create a real site with real content that will keep them coming back for more.

Personal Testimonials

A personal testimonial will result in more sales than a mere link or advertisement. So take the time and trouble to write a personal endorsement of the product or service you are promoting. And, of course, it goes without saying that in order to write a personal endorsement, you must know that of which you speak. NEVER promote a program you haven't first purchased yourself. If you don't think enough of your program to invest in it, how do you expect to persuade others to?

Promote With Your Sig File

Include a link to your site in the signature of every email you send.

Promote In Your Own Ezine

Finally, if you're not already publishing your own ezine or newsletter to stay in touch with your site visitors, start. It's a great way to promote not only your site but also the affiliate programs you promote from your site.

MAKING SERIOUS MONEY FROM AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

The only way of making SERIOUS money from affiliate programs is by creating your own product or service and recruiting affiliates to sell for YOU.

The affiliate program phenomenon is one of the Internet's true success stories. It provides a toe-hold for the would-be internet entrepreneur to begin a real, live business of his or her very own. But the real beauty of affiliate programs lies not in what they can do for you, as an affiliate, but what they can do for you, as a recruiter of affiliates for your own program. By all means jump on the bandwagon and start promoting other people's products to get your start. But don't wait too long to start developing your own product line. There is a ready-made salesforce numbering in the millions ready and waiting to sell it for you.

By Elena Fawkner
Source:Affiliate Program Article from: AHome-BasedBusinessOnline.com

WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM?

2007-03-20T21:53:00.001+07:00

An "affiliate program" (also known as a reseller, associate, referral or partnership program) is essentially a revenue-sharing arrangement whereby you, the affiliate, receive payment from the owner of a product or service that you promote on their behalf.

Affiliate programs are an excellent way for the new internet entrepreneur to start an online business.

TYPES OF AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

There are various types of affiliate programs.

The most simple involves you, the affiliate, placing a banner ad, graphic or text link at your site which is linked to the site of the business you are promoting. This link is coded with your unique affiliate ID so that the site visitor is recorded at the target site as having originated from your site, thereby allowing you to be credited with the sale.

Payment is generally a fixed percentage of the sale value (commission) or "pay per click", where the affiliate is paid a certain amount for every time a site visitor clicks on the link at the affiliate's site, whether or not a sale is made.

The more sophisticated affiliate programs are multi-tier and allow the affiliate to earn commissions not only on the traffic they directly refer to the target site but also a proportion of sales generated by their sub-affiliates.

BENEFITS OF AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

The greatest benefit of affiliate programs is that when you are just starting out in your own online business you don't have to worry about creating your own product or service. You just promote someone else's and get a share of the revenue pie for your efforts.

You also don't have to concern yourself with warehousing, transport or logistics headaches. All of this is handled by the business whose products/services you are promoting. All you need concentrate on is driving traffic to that business's website. This means that a high proportion of your revenue is profit.

The owner of the product/service is also responsible for collecting payment, customer service and the myriad other details that come up on a day to day basis in running the business.

DISADVANTAGES OF AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

The main and obvious disadvantage of affiliate programs is that it is the owner of the product/service who earns the lion's share of the profit on the sale.

You're working on commission. You will NEVER earn by way of affiliate program commissions as much as you can earn by way of profits from producing and selling your own product/service.

As a result, affiliate programs represent a high opportunity cost when you consider what you could earn if you instead channeled the time and energy you spend on promoting affiliate programs into creating and promoting your own product/service.

For this reason, it does not make sound business sense to rely solely on affiliate program income for the longer term growth of your business.

Instead, think of them as a way of dipping your toe in the water when you're first getting started, and a nice little sideline once you've created your own product/service. Do NOT build your business around affiliate programs with the intention this will always be the backbone of your business. You'll be stunting your own growth if you do.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT AFFILIATE PROGRAMS FOR YOUR BUSINESS

So, keeping in mind what affiliate programs can and can't do for your business, let's turn to what you should look for when choosing an affiliate program or programs to promote in your business.

Synergistic Products/Services

First off, and this is a cardinal rule, only promote those programs which will allow you to create synergies with your site. This means selecting programs that naturally complement the subject matter of your site and that will therefore be of interest and relevance to your site visitors. This will ensure your prospects (ie your site visitors) are pre-qualified which will result in a relatively higher conversion ratio (the ratio of visitors to purchases) than would be the case if your traffic is untargeted (which will be the case if you promote unrelated products and services from your site.)

Quality In All Things

Keeping the need for synergy uppermost in mind, look for quality programs first and foremost. The last thing you want to waste your time, money and reputation on is a shoddy product or service. There are just too many quality programs out there to settle for anything less.

Stability of Company

Look for a company that's been around for a while and that's reputable and stable (both financially and in its management). Any reputable company will have full contact details readily available so do your research.

References

Look for testimonials and references from other affiliates. If the company you're interested is not forthcoming when it comes to putting you in touch with other affiliates, move on.

Affiliate Agreement

Look for a professional, considered and detailed affiliate agreement (contract). This shows that the company is serious about its business.

Watch out for exclusivity clauses and other restraints. Some affiliate agreements will require that you not promote competing businesses' products and services. This is not to say you should avoid such agreements. As a general rule, it is your interests not to promote competing programs anyway. Just be aware of what the agreement says on the subject to avoid getting yourself into hot water.

Look also for an agreement that treats spammers harshly. This protects not only the company but other affiliates as well. The last thing you or any other reputable affiliate needs is to have your reputation and the reputation of the product/service you are promoting besmirched by these sorts of tactics.

High Commissions

Promoting someone else's affiliate program necessarily requires that you divert traffic away from your site and towards someone else's. Make sure you're properly compensated with a high commission structure. And be sure to set up your link so that when the visitor clicks on it, a new browser window is opened for the target site. This at least keeps your site in front of the visitor so they can go back to your site once they've finished at the site your link has taken them to.

Lifetime Commissions

Look for affiliate programs that will credit you with not only THIS sale but all other sales the customer may make in the future. Many programs are set up so that the customer is identified as "yours" so that when the customer returns to the target site in three months time, the sale is recorded as having been generated by you.

Residual Commissions

Include programs that offer residual commissions in your portfolio. Good examples are webhosting services, autoresponder services and the like where customers sign up for a continuous service that requires periodic, regular payments. You receive periodic, regular commissions as a result.

Tracking of Commissions

Look for programs that allow you real-time access to your stats so you can keep easy track of your commissions.

Reliability of Payment

When checking with affiliate references, find out what the business's record is on paying out commissions. If they're slow or there appears to be a pattern of problems, keep looking.

Frequency of Payment

Make a note of payment schedules too. Some programs pay weekly, some monthly, some quarterly. Some only pay once you accumulate commissions of a certain amount. None of these arrangements are necessarily good or bad in and of themselves. Just be sure you know what to expect.

Programs that Require Payment Up Front

Two words: MOVE ON!

Affiliate Support

Finally, take a look at what support the business offers its affiliates to make sales. Do they provide resources such as sample ads, banners, logos and the like? Do they provide useful advice about maximizing your sales? A good affiliate program provides affiliates with a LOT of support in these areas.

By Elena Fawkner
Source: Affiliate Program Article from: AHome-BasedBusinessOnline.com