In an earlier article, we talked about finding the best affiliate programs to promote and finding a proper fit for your business. But where do you go to find reputable programs that you can depend on to make sure you are paid what you earn?
Our primary focus in this article will be finding and promoting digital products because of the low (or no) overhead to sell them, and higher commissions paid on them. But above all else, you must find a product that people are interested in and are willing to buy, and we’ll talk a little bit about where to find these products, and how to get an idea of whether or not there is a demand for them.
Where To Look For Affiliate Programs
The Major Affiliate Networks, such as Clickbank, function as middlemen between merchants and affiliates and are an excellent place to start looking for companies to affiliate with, and the signup is free. They also make it simple for you to find programs to promote through their search facilities (catalogs), and your HTML (affiliate) links and other promotional tools will be provided for you to copy and paste right into your marketing material or on your website.
You can sign up with Clickbank and immediately start promoting any of their tons of digitally delivered products, ranging from ebooks to software. Clickbank’s interface makes it very easy to find the perfect products that are relevant to your online business.
PayDotCom is another place to find products to promote that is popular among affiliate marketers. PayDotCom has some nice perks such as the fact that you get paid instantly (to your PayPal account) whereas with Clickbank your payments are made bi-weekly.
If you are selling your own product through PayDotCom rather than promoting one for someone else, you will have fewer strict rules to contend with, and they are not quite as expensive as Clickbank.
Once you have carefully chosen a product that you feel would be a good complement to your website, take a minute to visit the owner’s website (which you can do from Clickbank) and take a look at the sales page you’ll be sending your prospective customers to. Make sure it is professionally done and that the ordering process is clearly laid out for ease of placing an order. If you wouldn’t be likely to buy from that site, your visitors probably wouldn’t either.
You want to do everything you can to maximize the profits you earn for your efforts.
Other Considerations For Your Affiliate Programs
A program’s commission rates, and whether their’s is a two-tier program are a couple of the things that are good to know when choosing an affiliate program. You should be able to find this information out from either Clickbank or the product owner’s website.
Also, do they offer lifetime, or residual commissions? This means that if a customer returns to the merchant’s site and makes a second or third purchase later, you earn a commission on ALL of those purchases, as well.
In most cases, when your referral signs up for a product or service that requires recurring payments, you get a commission on each of those recurring payments for as long as your referral is a customer.
Does the program offer an affiliate section on their website so that you can check your affiliate account stats 24/7?
All of these are important considerations before you choose an affiliate program. Choosing the wrong ones can cost you a huge amount of wasted time, effort, and money, so it’s best to promote the ones you choose for a reasonable amount of time, and if you have no sales on a product, stop promoting it and look for another one.
Newcomers to affiliate marketing might find it easier to sell a lot of less expensive products than it is to sell the higher priced items, especially in the beginning. It makes more sense to promote a product that pays lower commissions if it is actually converting into sales, than it does to try to sell a higher commission item that nobody is buying.
Many affiliate marketing business owners make very decent incomes promoting the smaller “stuff”, and if you choose to take this route, you can gradually build up to the larger items later as you get more experience.
