Affiliate Programs 101!

Joining an affiliate program is one of the easiest ways to start an online business and generate income for your website. These revenue sharing programs are very popular on the net. And is the way many new entrepreneurs started online.
When you join an affiliate program your task is to promote the merchants services or products on your website or in your ezine. This is easier than you might think because the merchants supply members with banners or links back to their site to promote the product. Plus they tally up your clicks or sales.
But Beware!
Make sure you understand all the details of the program. Avoid MLM programs. Only the first tier group will reap rewards. Avoid any program where you recruit other affiliates. And your earnings are based on a percentage of their profits. Your profits plummet if your recruits abandon the program.
Affiliate programs pay their members a fixed amount for each sale, click through, lead, or banner impression.
Here's a simple breakdown of most payment plans:
-Pay per sale.
A commission is paid for each sale your site/ezine generates.
-Pay per click through.
You receive a payment for each valid click to the sponsors website.
-Pay per lead.
You receive a payment for each sales lead for a service or product.
-Pay per impression.
You receive a payment each time a merchants banner or link is displayed to the merchants site.
Joining an affiliate program is easy! Just be sure to select an affiliate program with appropriate services or products that match your targeted audience.
If your ezine/website attracts Rugged Out-doors motorcycle enthusiast, you certainly would not display maternity clothing or baby booties.
Or if your ezine/website attracts young teenagers, you certainly don't want to display senior citizen products like walkers or vitamins for older adults.
Always read the fine print. Make sure you understand the payment clause. Many affiliate programs will only send you payment after you've accumulated a certain sales amount. Anything from $10.00 and up.
Affiliates might pay every other week, per month or per quarter. You will receive a payment if you reach the minimum balance in sales during that pay period. Most balances are accumulative. So, if you do not reach the minimum during one pay period it will be rolled over to your next pay period and added to any sales balances. Once again, read the fine print in the affiliate agreement when you sign up for pertinent details.
Here are a few popular affiliate programs.
Clickbank http://www.clickbank.com
Commission Junction http://www.commisionjunction.com
To find more affiliate programs, go to one of the search engines like:
Google http://www.google.com
Type in affiliate programs. Click on the one's that interest you.
Are you a newbie and want an easy way to get into business fast? Join an affiliate program!
One Super Affiliate Rosalind Gardner shares her techniques and secrets in her newest ebook. Check it out if you want to get into business fast.
"Super Affiliate Handbook" Click Here: http://hop.clickbank.net/?xy123/webvista2
BB Lee is the editor and publisher of SmallBizBits Newsletter.
Join our list today and receive your ebook bonus.
http://www.geocities.com/smallbizbits
To subscribe... mailto:Smallbiz-subscribe@topica.com

7 Reasons Why You Should Start with Affiliate Program

There are thousands of business opportunities online. Most of them require some capital to start with. Not affiliate programs!Here are 7 reasons why you should consider joining an affiliate program as your home based business. 1. Joining an affiliate program requires no outlay of capital. That's right, none! You can join an affiliate program for free and start promoting the product immediately. 2. The internet marketing tools are already provided for you. A 'top' affiliate program will supply you with lots of affiliate marketing tools that are 'ready to go'. You just copy and paste and put your affiliate code in. Then you start selling. 3. You do not need a product. It takes a LOT of time to develop your own product to sell online. With affiliate programs, the product is already there. Someone else spent all the time developing it so you do not have to. 4. Affiliate statistics are already provided as part of joining an affiliate program. You do not have to go out and buy expensive software to track your sales because the product owner is doing that for you. You don't even have to pay for it,it's free!5. You do not have any 'time lag'. With most businesses it takes a certain amount of time in the 'start up' phase. With affiliate programs there is no such thing. Once you join you can start selling. 6. You do not have to worry about sales administration and technical support. The product owner takes care of the sales process and all the after sales service. All you have to worry about is receiving your affiliate check!7. You do not have to worry about direct contact with the customer. In an affiliate program you are a re-seller so if the customer has a complaint they contact the product owner, not you. Affiliate programs are simple to join, easy to start promoting and best of all they have no downside. If one affiliate programdoes not work out, you can leave and join a different one.
About the Author
David McKenzie is offering a Free Email Course "5 Tips to Being Successful with Affiliate Programs"==> http://www.1sthomebasedbusiness.comClick now for your FREE course!

How to Find an Affiliate Program For Any Niche in 2 Minutes

There is a great trend lately of marketers finally moving to niche markets and not just focusing on selling to the “make money” industry. This is an excellent move and one that will prove to be very profitable for you. However, a problem that many affiliates are hitting is that they don’t know how to find good niche affiliate programs.
If there isn’t a program in Clickbank, most affiliates are lost! Also, since Clickbank doesn’t allow us to “search” their database, it’s too hard to find anything there.Well, here is a quick and easy way to find any and all of the best and most profitable affiliate program for any niche you desire.To find affiliate programs from now on you will use Google to help you. Google is a great tool to use because…1. It’s free2. Any site that comes up on the top results is likely reputable and has been around3. You get thousands of results you can search through4. You can make your search very specificAlright, let’s discuss in steps, how to Google to find affiliate programs.1. Go over to http://www.Google.com2.Type your “Niche Title + affiliate” – This is the step that a lot of people can get confused in so let’s clear it right now. Example/ If I am searching for an affiliate program on dog health, I will type this phrase into Google = dog health + affiliate3. Now the results that I get, all the pages that have the term “dog health” and the term “affiliate” will show up.4. Next open a program like Excel or just take out a piece of paper.5. Go through the results in Google and keep noting down the different programs that come up.6. Once you have 10 programs listed, go back and research each of them to find the most profitable one.Try this strategy on search engines like Yahoo as well. You will get different results and combined between Yahoo and Google, there is no way that you won’t find a good affiliate program.What if you don’t find any affiliate programs this way?Then most likely an affiliate program for your niche does not exist. A great way to make money now is to contact a few of these websites and introduce the concept to them! Perhaps help them set up an affiliate script and share in profits – actually, if there is no affiliate program in that nice, you and that company can make BIG profits from it!There, now you have NO excused not to find profitable niches and build websites for them. You can now find a profitable affiliate program for them all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
This article has been authored by Anik Singal, the founder of http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com. If you want to learn more about how to use articles to drive massive amounts of traffic to your website, please sign-up for our FR-EE course at:http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com

Build A High Profit Business With Online Affiliate Programs

Q: I am considering starting an ebusiness using affiliate programs, but there is so much hype out there I can't figure out which programs would work best for me. Everybody claims their program is best. I'd really appreciate some guidance here.A: Affiliate programs can be an excellent way to start an ebusiness. Before we dive into the specifics, let me explain how an affiliate program works.An affiliate program simply means that you sign on as an affiliate marketer for someone else's product. It's your job to market the product, send the company customers, and get a cut each time a sale is made from your efforts. Affiliate program commissions can range from as little as 2% for high ticket items up to 50% for ebooks and informational type products.As an example, let's say you sign up with Amazon.com's affiliate program. You are assigned an affiliate code which you use to promote Amazon's books on your website. When someone clicks to purchase an Amazon product from your website, your affiliate code is included in the URL and you get a commission for the sale. Some folks have built elaborate websites that sell nothing but Amazon.com's books, and each time they make a sale they get a piece of the pie.At dropshipwholesale.net we are affiliates for many products that fit our entrepreneurial niche. We market mostly ebooks and software, but we do have an Amazon page for business books.One of the most appealing aspects of affiliate programs is how quickly you can begin making money. You can literally sign up as an affiliate and begin making money in minutes. I've done it, I know it works.Admittedly, I am not an affiliate program expert, so I sought out the person that many call the Ultimate Affiliate Program Authority, Rosalind Gardner.Rosalind Gardner began making money with affiliate programs in 1997. She has since grown her affiliate business into a $400,000 a year business and is now considered the authority on the subject. Her book 'The Super Affiliate Handbook: How to Make a Fortune Selling Other People's Stuff Online' has been out since March and is already considered by many to be the affiliate marketers bible.I ordered Rosalind's book as research for this article and I have to tell you I found it to be one of the best books on the subject I have ever read. It's a hype-fr*e approach to what affiliate marketing is really all about and how to make it work. The book is 270 pages and leaves no stone unturned. For anyone serious about making money with affiliate programs, I highly recommend this book.The bottom line is this: you can make a lot of money with affiliate programs, if you pick the right product and do your part to promote it. As for which programs would be best for you, I advise that you concentrate your efforts on one or two products instead of starting with a shotgun approach. Pick only top quality products that hold some personal interest you. Never pick an affiliate product just because you think you'll make a ton of money with it.Remember, you are starting a business. If it's not a business that holds your interest, you won't be in business very long.Here's to you success!Tim Knox
About the Author
For more information on affiliate programs: THE SUPER AFFILIATE HANDBOOK Rosalind Gardner - http://hop.clickbank.net/?tknox/webvista2 CLICKIN' IT RICH Michael Campbell--- http://hop.clickbank.net/?tknox/dmcorp - http://www.prosperityandprofits.com

12 Tips For A Successful Affiliate Program

1. Look around at other competing businesses that offer affiliate programs, and think of ways that you can make youraffiliate program more attractive.2. Pay your affiliates well for their efforts.If you're thinking about offering a 10% commission for sales of your product and a competing business is paying a 50% commission for referrals, you'll lose affiliates to your competitor.3. Make your affiliate program more lucrative by offering residual commissions. This is an excellent choice if you offer a product that is paid for on a residual basis such as webhosting or access to your membership site.4. Offer lifetime commissions.Your affiliates will see the power of lifetime commissions, and work hard to promote your business and send you more sales.5. Make your affiliate program two-tier.Reward your affiliates by giving them a commission on the sales of people they refer to your affiliate program.6. Don't leave your affiliates out in the cold.Provide your affiliates with lots of sales items that they can use to successfully promote your products. Some items you could offer your affiliates:- e-zine ads (sponsor ads, classified ads, 2 liners)- signature file ads- sales letters/solo ads- brandable ebooks- sample recommendations- email courses- your articles that they can reprint with their affiliate URLs in your resource box.7. Be quick to respond to your affiliates' emails.An easy way to lose your affiliates is to not respond to their questions in a timely manner, or to not respond to their e-mails at all. It shows that you don't value them, and since their are tons of other affiliate programs, you would be losing potentially very good affiliates to other businesses.8. Provide your own tips and advice.Follow up with your affiliates with tips and strategies that they can use to increase their commissions.9. Reward your top affiliates with higher commissions and bonuses. You'll be able to achieve more sales over the long term because your top affiliates won't jump to another affiliate program where their efforts are more appreciated.10. Publish an affiliate's newsletter.Your affiliate's newsletter will help you to share your tips with your affiliates, and keep them going in the right direction.You could also use your newsletter to keep your top affiliates excited about your program. Some effective ways to do this are:- Share what your top affiliates do to earn big commission checks. - Showcase their sites and tell why their sites sell. - List your 5 or 10 highest earning affiliates for the month.11. Track your affiliates' sales accurately.Your affiliates will find out if they send you customers and you don't credit them with their commissions. Your affiliate program will lose credibility and you'll end up losing your affiliates as word gets around.12. Participate in affiliate marketing forums.Share your valuable advice and expertise with the members of the forums you participate in. Include your signature file that promotes your affiliate program, and always follow the rules of the forums you join.About the author:Article by Ken Hill. Want To Start Your Own Profit Driving Affiliate Program? Power packed solution has what you need. Includes affiliate program software, shopping cart, ad tracking and easy e-zine management. Automate your online business today at: http://www.scstats.com/r.cfm?i=5029

Getting Rich from Affiliate Programs

Some times it pays to work with others. In this article wewill discuss how to make money with affiliate programs.Affiliate programs (also called Referral Programs orPartnership Programs) are essentially commission-based salesschemes. You recommend a site to your users and pick up apercentage of any sales those users generate. You benefitfrom the commission and the site benefits from sales itwouldn’t otherwise have made. If you’ve ever gone to awebsite and seen links to Amazon, those were affiliatelinks.You can run an affiliate program from a site you’ve alreadyset up, or create a site specially to promote a product orservice. As long as it brings in more cash than you spend onbuilding it and buying traffic, you’re laughing.Affiliate ads work two ways: you can join them to makemoney, or you can run one to attract users.************************************************************Joining An Affiliate Program************************************************************As with any marketing venture, you need to be careful in theselection of an affiliate program. The benefit of anaffiliate program is that it gives you another way to makemoney from your users. Instead of selling them a productyourself, you send them to a partner and take a cut.On the downside though, your affiliate ads will take theplace of a different ad that you could have put in that samespot. You have to make sure that each advertising positionon your site is bringing in the maximum revenue possible. Ifyou’re not getting the most from your site, you’re tossingmoney away.The key to success is to choose the right program, rightfrom the beginning.Now, a lot of commercial sites run affiliate programs.That’s because they know that they only have to pay acommission if a sale is actually made; it’s a proven way togenerate revenue without risk. What that means for you isthat when it comes to choosing an affiliate program, you’regoing to have a huge range to choose from. What it all boilsdown to though is product and price.While it might be tempting to go for the program that paysthe highest commissions, the program won’t pay you a pennyif your users won’t go there or won’t buy once they getthere. You have to be certain that the service you’repromoting is of genuine interest to the kind of users youbuy, whether you’re buying them from search engines oranywhere else.Sure, you can work backwards: You find a high-payingaffiliate program and create a small site to send users toit, but do you know where to buy users for a program likethat? You’re going to have to research the field, check outthe most popular sites, and negotiate banner campaigns andlink exchanges.That’s fine if you want to invest the time and the effort.But it’s much easier to find an affiliate program operatingin a field you’re familiar with, and use that program toearn extra cash.For example, suppose you had set up a dating site. You mightmake bit of money selling subscriptions, but you might makeeven more by joining Match.com’s affiliate program andselling them your users. Unless you’re planning to be theInternet’s biggest dating site, you’re not going to be ableto compete directly and beat them, but you can join them—andearn money.Or rather than sell your users directly to a ‘competitor’,you can look for services that complement your own. Visitorsto your dating site, for example, might be interested inbuying flowers, books on relationships or tickets on singlescruises. Instead of selling just one product—membershipsubscriptions—you’d be selling a whole range of differentgoods to the same people, and increasing the sources of yourincome.Here are some tips to selecting an affiliate program that islucrative and right for you:* Don’t accept less than 25% commission. You can findaffiliate programs with great payment structures and highpercentages of the purchase price in just about everyfield.* Look for comprehensive statistics pages that list thenumber of click-throughs, sales and earnings so you canseehow you’re doing. The information should be broken downby month.* Look for programs that offer a wide variety ofpromotional tools to put on your Web page, including textlinks, banners and graphics.* Find out how often you will be paid and make sure thatthe payment schedule meets your expectations. Someprograms paymonthly, others quarterly; which is best for you?* Look for examples of marketing methods that successfulaffiliates are using to get the best results.* Make sure that top level support is given. If they can’tanswer your questions promptly and intelligently, youdon’t want to work with them.Affiliate programs offer a viable solution to competingagainst larger competitors and still make money. As thesaying goes, if you can’t beat them, joint them!Until next time,
About the Author
Eric WhiteLAUNCH SPECIAL - How to Become a Master Affiliate http://masteraffiliatemarketer.aceturbo.com/PS: Brand NEW! People are getting paid instantly with this! $10, $100, $1000 Stair Step Profits. http://edwinc.com/recommends/Instant

Affiliate Programs - Points To Consider

It seems as though you can't visit a web site now without being asked to join their affiliate program - they're everywhere! Affiliate programs are attractive, as they offer a means of earning money from product sales without having to actually take orders, ship merchandise, deal with customers, stock inventory or take a financial risk. Post a banner to your web site and you're in business. Affiliate programs do offer a means to make additional income from your site, however, there are a few points to consider. A Good Fit: Before you run out and join a bunch of affiliate programs, take a moment to think about your current web site visitors. What types of products and information would they be most interested in? For example, if you have a web site that deals with pets, joining an affiliate program that sells pet supplies might be a good fit. This would be something your average visitor would have an interest in. Joining a program that sells books on How To Kill Your Neighbor's Pesky Pet, may not be such a good fit. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think you get my point. If your affiliate program doesn't appeal to your site's visitors, you will not have much success. More Isn't Always Better: If joining one affiliate program is a good deal, then why not join 500 programs? Don't stop there, why not post as many different affiliate banners as will fit onto each web page? If this sounds like a good philosophy, think again! Posting too many banners and text links on your pages will not only look sloppy and slow down the time it takes to load your pages, but will confuse your visitors, resulting in less click through traffic, rather than more. (Click through traffic - People that actually click on your affiliate banners and/or text links.) It's best to focus on just a couple affiliate programs. And make sure to keep your pages simple, easy to read, and aesthetically pleasing. Increasing Your Click Through Traffic: As I said before, your web pages should be simple. Too many banners, especially those that change rapidly or flash, can be very distracting and annoying to your visitors. Also, don't rely just on banners to generate click through traffic for your affiliate program. Adding text links in addition to banners will greatly increase your click through percentages. Banner ads are becoming so common that many people don't give them a second look. By adding simple text links on your web pages which explain a little more about your affiliate program's product(s) you can capture the attention of your visitors and increase your click through traffic. Also, the placement of these banners and text links is important too. Putting these at the bottom of your pages will not result in as many hits as you would have if they were displayed in a more prominent place on your page. Ask Questions Before You Join: Doing a little research before you join an affiliate program will pay big dividends later. Find out the answers to these questions before making a commitment to join any program: * Does it cost anything to join? Most affiliate programs offered today are absolutely free to join. * When do they issue commission checks? All programs are different. Some issue once a month, some issue every quarter, etc. Also, many programs set a minimum earned commission amount which an affiliate must meet or exceed prior to a check being issued. * What is the hit per sale ratio? (The average number of hits to a banner or text link it takes to generate a sale - based on all affiliate statistics.) This is extremely important, as this number will tell you how much traffic you must generate before you can expect to earn a commission from a sale. * How are referrals from an affiliate's site tracked, and for how long do they remain in the system? You need to be confident in the program's ability to track those people your refer from your site. This is the only way you'll get credit for a sale. Additionally, how long those people stay in the system is also important, as the visitor may not buy initially, but may return later to make a purchase. Will you still get credit for the sale six months from now? * What kind of affiliate stats are available? Does the program offer detailed stats? Are these online and available in real time? It's important to be able to see your individual stats, so you know how many impressions, hits and sales you have generated from your site. (Impressions are the number of times the program's banner or text link was viewed by a visitor to your site. A hit is simply someone clicking on a banner or text link - taking the visitor from your site to the program site.) * Does the program pay just commissions on sales, or do they also pay for hits and/or impressions? Getting paid for impressions and/or hits, in addition to commissions on sales, is important. This is especially true if the program has a low sales to hit ratio. * Who is the online retailer? Find out who you are doing business with. Is this a solid company? How do they fill orders? What types of payments do they accept? How long have they been in business? What are their return policies and how do these affect you? What products do they sell and what is their average sale amount? The more you know about the retailer offering the affiliate program, the easier it will be for you to determine if this is the program for you and your site. * Is this a one or two tier program? A single tier program pays you only for the business you personally generate. A two tier program pays you for your business, plus it pays you a commission on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor into their program. Some two tier programs will also pay you a small fee on each new affiliate you sponsor - a recruitment fee. * Finally, what is the amount of commission paid? (And fee for impressions/hits - if available.) 5% - 20% is common for commissions paid on sales. $.01 - $.05 is common for the amount paid for each hit (click through). If you find a program that also pays for impressions, don't expect the amount paid to be much at all. From these numbers you can see that the program's average sale amount and hit to sale ratio are extremely important. This is especially true if yours is a low traffic site to begin with. These are just a few of the main aspects of affiliate programs which you should be familiar with if you plan to incorporate any such program into your web site. I hope this provides the reader with additional insight and helps them in selecting the right program for their site.
About the Author
Todd W. Winslow is the co-owner of TADD Marketing Group, L.L.C. He is also the founder of TADD Publishing Group which publishes a variety of e-mail newsletters http://www.taddgroup.com, and is co-creator of The Mystic Beagle - a romance and relationship advice web site http://www.mysticbeagle.com