Sunday, May 18, 2008

12 Tips For A Successful Affiliate Program

by: Ken Hill
1. Look around at other competing businesses that offer affiliate programs, and think of ways that you can make your
affiliate 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

Friday, May 9, 2008

11 Tips for Joining Affiliate Programs

by: David McKenzie
Here are some things that I look for before joining an affiliate
program. They are items I feel are imperative to being in a
successful affiliate program.

1. The affiliate program has a great payment structure. For me, a
high commission that is also a high percentage of the purchase price
is essential. Nothing under 25% commission.

2. Make sure the affiliate program you are joining has a good looking
site. You do not want to be sending visitors to a site that you do
not like yourself.

3. Make sure they offer a comprehensive affiliate statistics page
that lists the number of click throughs, number of sales and amount
earned. This should be broken down per month.

4. Also make sure that the affiliate statistics are updated
automatically and immediately. You do not want to find out today
about a sale you made a week ago.

5. Ensure they give a wide variety of text links, banners and
graphics to put on your web page. Although I prefer text links,
certain types of banners and graphics still work well.

6. Know how often you are going to be paid. If you are tossing up
between 2 programs and one pays monthly and the other pays quarterly,
the one that pays monthly is better. You do not want to wait months
before getting paid for your hard work!

7. See if the affiliate program gives examples of how the top
affiliates are doing. This can be a great pointer to whether it is
good or not. If some affiliates are earning many thousands per month,
it is a good affiliate program.

8. Along these lines, also see if they give examples of what
marketing methods these successful affiliates are using to get the
best results.

9. An affiliate program that offers a special monthly newsletter just
for the affiliates is great. Here you can get extra tips and
techniques that are working well.

10. See if they offer email notification when you make a sale or get
an affiliate signed up under you (if it is a 2-tier program). It is
good to see `You have made another sale' in your inbox.

11. Ensure top level support is given. If they cannot answer your
query straight away make sure they can respond within 48 hours.

There is tremendous demand for affiliate programs and choosing the
right one is no easy task. Make sure you do plenty of research before
joining one.

About the Author

David McKenzie of
http://www.brisney.com For great ideas on promoting your web site or
marketing your affiliate programs subscribe to our Free twice monthly
newsletter by sending a blank email to mailto:brisney@brisney.com

8 Reasons why Affiliate Programs are the better option

by: Sara Bonnet
Many people are confused when they first become iterested in


internet businesses, they find themselves asking

what type of busisness is best for me?

Well I can't answer this for you but I can certainly give you
a few pointers in the right direction and my personal opinion.
So here they are:

1. No emplyees. There is no need to employ people to do the
work for you.

2. Low costs. Most affiliate programs are free to join, you
don't have to buy the product to sell it. Some programs have
a upgrade option to make which makes your earninig capacity
somewhat larger.

3. No storage. The merchant is responsible for the storage of
product so you don't need to worry about space or storage costs

4. No shipping and handling. The merchant is also responsible
for the product arrival, so there's also another cost you don't
need to worry about and running around you won't have to do.

5. You don't deal with customer service. Another problem you
don't need is customers who are not happy, if they are not
happy the merchant deals with it.

6. No account keeping. There is no need to store customer
information such as credit card details, addresses and phone
numbers, this is yet another merchant responsibility.

7. No trading time for a wage. You can spend as little or as
much time as you like selling your product. How much money you
want to make is entirely up to you.

8. There are literally thousands of options out there for you.
If you have a favourite niche market go for it, in my experience
if it is a product that you are really happy with then it will
be easy to sell.

If this doesn't clear things up for you, I don't know what will!
What better way to make money online then to watch the company do
all the hard work. All you have to do is promote, promote, promote,
and when it is something you are happy with it's easy!


About the author:
Get your fully automated money making website setup free thats 100% ready to take orders and pull in massive residual profits for you right now... Guaranteed! Visit: http://www.profitableworkfromhome.com/pips.html