Affiliate Programs : Affiliate Marketing- Part I

analysis of your site. This will present your website in a very plain and subtle way. Through this you would know where your website's strength lies in.

2. Scout for the right product for you.
This is common sense, but let me reiterate this fact. Always sign up for products you think will fit in with your website's theme. You would not want to be a web host and sign up as an affiliate, selling another web host who promises to give you a 50% commission. Now that would be very silly to do. The bottom line is that sign up for services that will "Add Value" to the services provided by your website.

3. The Affiliate Terms & Conditions.

This is the saddest part of affiliate marketing. In my experience, I used to come across at least 2 cases of misunderstood affiliates who feel they are cheated out in the deal. Always ensure that you read the terms & conditions carefully and clarify with the company incase you have any further queries.

4. Prepare your site.
Another major problem in affiliate marketing is tracking. Always ensure that you have some tools and logs to monitor the traffic on your site and if possible the outgoing links, clicks, etc. Let’s face it, no matter how big a company is, setting up the perfect affiliate tracking tools is something which I have not come across so far. So there will always be a situation where in you will have to lose out on a conversion. Make sure that you have your back covered with the tools so that your case will have credibility.

Remember, a company would never want to deny an affiliate, especially if the affiliate is really genuine. Why? I’m sure you know the reasons.

5. Affiliate Networks or Direct Affiliate?
Now that you have all the details with you, the next question is whether to sign up with an affiliate network of to sign up directly as the company's affiliate. There are a few things to consider here. I would not restrain you from signing up with either of the entities as both have their pros and cons.

a) If you are looking at a reasonably good tracking system and hassle free set up, then Affiliate Networks would be the right place for you.

b) If you are not quite sure of the products you want to sell, but you want to set up some affiliate banners, then affiliate networks is the best place to sign up.

c) If you think you can handle the terms & condition put forth by the company and if you are fairly adept in setting up a foolproof system on your site then sign up with the company directly. It will also help you negotiate a custom deal which will offer you much higher payouts as compared to signing up with networks.

Keep in mind that affiliate networks are nothing but sites just like yours who sign up as a master affiliate. By setting up their infrastructure, tracking, etc they allow various other people to sign up through them. What happens in this case is that the affiliate networks are the master affiliates, while you become the sub affiliate. So what this means is that the extra commission earned by the networks for the sales you bring, a part of it is used towards providing you with better service. And there are a few networks which also charge you a certain fee for the transactions.
But do not think that signing up directly will be a better deal. Because although this will provide you with direct interact with the company and in most cases, with the account manager, you will have to be 100% of your tracking and other problems that might arise.

So if you are ready to make some serious money and efforts towards marketing a product, then go ahead, there is no better way to do it than through affiliate marketing and no, I am not talking about Google AdSense here.

About the Author

John Benjamin works as a freelance consultant for Internet Marketing. His website has various articles listed at http://www.promindsinc.com

He also has a forum where you can find all the articles, discussions at http://www.promindsinc.com/bb/
Written By: John Benjamin (ProMinds Inc)