If you are new to Internet marketing or even if you just want to expand your online money making capabilities to unbelievable heights, affiliate marketing is for you. With affiliate marketing, you can begin on literally any budget, you don’t have to develop your own products and/or services and you can rake in the big bucks even if you’re still green behind the ears. For affiliate marketing to work, however, you need to know how to choose the very best affiliate marketing programs. Even with persistence, patience and all the knowledge in the world, without the right programs, you won’t make a dime at affiliate marketing no matter how much effort you put in. The following should help you choose the ideal programs that will take your affiliate marketing campaigns past the competition and beyond.
What Makes A Great Affiliate Program?
Affiliate marketing is all about promoting other people’s products and services for a cut of the profits. Each program you sell, you get a commission. The idea is to choose high-quality products that customers have a high interest in. If you can find that program and you can position that program in front of hungry customers, you’ll make it big in affiliate marketing like so many before you.
Characteristics To Look For
The following tips are going to help you choose an affiliate program that will help you achieve your marketing goals. Before we get started, you need to be aware of certain aspects that all winning programs share. As you look through each program you come across, you will want to gauge whether the author/creator has:
- Put His/Her All Into It: Is the program professional, well-laid out and packaged properly or does it look like a half-hearted attempt by some unscrupulous business owner to try and earn a quick buck. It may take time to develop a keen eye for marketing programs that are worth their weight in gold, so until then look everything over and try to see the program as a whole. If the business owner seems as though they tried their very best, that might be a good marketing program to promote.
- Created A Program That People Want: Is there a high demand for the affiliate program or is it hit-or-miss with the target audience? The lucrative affiliate marketing program will appeal to customers and the hungry ones with money won’t be able to resist buying it. It takes time, effort, experience and lots of research to be able to compile a program like this. Being able to spot a desirable product is a skill you will definitely want to learn, as these are the programs that will earn you the most money.
- Researched the Competition: Is the program just like all other competing programs in your niche or does the program offer something different, unique and highly-valuable? The best affiliate marketing programs borrow from competing programs and become better because of that fact. The most successful product and service creators conduct plenty of research and build off of the work of others to truly deliver value to customers everywhere.
- Provided Assistance To Affiliates:
The ideal affiliate marketing program will have a page or separate section dedicated to affiliate marketers set on marketing that product or service. The affiliate page might have banner ads, ad copy, articles, reviews and press releases, images and much more. All of these materials can help affiliate marketers sell more programs. This helps the business owner sell more and the affiliates get the help they need so that they can rake in the big bucks, too.
Top Tips For Choosing A Lucrative Affiliate Marketing Program
Now that you have a general idea what to look for, the following tips should help you discern the duds from the high-dollar affiliate marketing programs.
- % Of Commissions: Many affiliate programs offer at least 50% commission, which isn’t bad for promoting someone else’s product. Be aware that this is not standard. Some offer less of a percentage and some offer 75% or more. Some even offer 100% commissions. These types of products usually make their money on plenty of up-sells.
- Back-End Deals: If you are only somewhat ambitious, look for a product that offers a single sale, single commission. That means you sell one program and you get one commission. The alternative is to choose programs where there are plenty of up-sells, cross-sells and other ways to make money besides the original offer. For instance, that E-book you’re offering as an affiliate marketer might have a supplemental workbook, checklist, video tutorial series and more that are offered as up sells after the customer has made the original purchase. All of these extra sales offer more chances to put more affiliate marketing dollars in your pocket. Why choose single sale programs when you can choose programs that offer sale after sale, meaning more money for you? You might also want to look for membership programs, which will provide you with residual checks each month.
- Trial Offers: Some programs offer special programs to allow customers to try them out before fully committing. Free and $1 trials are common. These entice more customers to sign up. It’s up to you to make sure those customers stay enrolled past the grace period so that you don’t get cheated out of any commissions owed to you.
- Gravity and Competition: Pay attention to the gravity of the product you’re thinking about offering, as this indicates how many affiliates were paid for that program since the last pay period. The higher the gravity, the more competition you have to contend with. The idea is to find a high-quality, coveted product that not many affiliates are offering.
- Would You Buy It?: If the program fits all the other criteria we’ve set, before you select that affiliate marketing product or service as one you’d like to promote, ask yourself if you’d actually spend money on it yourself. How is the offer? Is the price fair for that type of offer?
How many bonuses come with the product? Is there support? A money back guarantee? You must put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers. If anything about the offer causes you to hold back, other customers might feel the same way. You will only want to promote those products that cause you to whip out your wallet without a second guess. The graphics, copy and offer have to match and be on-point for this to happen. If you can find an affiliate program like that, or several like it, you’ll do just find as an affiliate marketer.
Choosing a successful affiliate program is something that takes time. Even experienced affiliates need to spend time reading over a program, clicking through the various links and weighing the offer before they can effectively decide if the program is worth promoting or not. Keep these tips and techniques in mind the next time you’re facing a list of affiliate programs and you’ll be more likely to choose the most profitable from the bunch.
