money-making-programs-affiliate
Affiliate money making programs can be tough to tap into when trying to make money online. There are a variety of questions that need to be answered when choosing which affiliate program to use which I have grouped under certain headings.

The Brand
If you are out to recruit ’second tier’ affiliates then the brand is especially important, but with any product being sold on the Internet it needs to have a certain image, E.g. modern, reliable, useful, honest, fashionable or a ‘brand of the people’. The answers to the following questions should all be positive ones:

  • Is this program reliable?
  • What have other people said about this money making program?
  • What do my readers think about this product/company? (Reputation)

    • Money Matters
    People often make the mistake of putting too great an importance on the commission rate. Naturally an affiliate program that pays 50% commission has an advantage over one with a 25% commission rate, but it is not twice as lucrative because commission rates are only a single factor among many which influence overall earnings.

  • What are the commission rates?
  • What promotional tools are available to me?
  • Is the market too saturated with this product or type or advertising?

    • Relevance and User Satisfaction
    With a blog, this factor has an added importance. A major power of blogging is building up a loyal reader base. Selling a product to a reader that they are happy with means they are more likely to return and may even buy again. Honesty is the best policy.

  • Does the product interest the visitors to my site?
  • Is this product really going the help my readers?
  • Are they going to buy this, be glad they did and return as a result?
  • Is it so great that they will go and write a post about it linking to my blog? (not essential but it’s a great bonus if they do)

    • Help and Support
    As with any hobby or business we are all at different places along the ‘learning curve’ and so a functioning support system is useful for everyone. There are two types of support system:

    1. Those that actively teach new affiliates how to make the sales (like that of SFI)
    2. Basic support every service should have where members can ask questions and have any problems they may be having fixed.

  • Is there a functioning help system to report problems to that replies concisely in good time?
  • Will this affiliate program help me develop as an affiliate marketer and teach me new skills?
  • Do I already know enough and have the core skills to make a good start selling this product? (This could be something as fundamental as ad placement)

    • Payment
    This simple part of an affiliate program has it’s own series of questions:

  • What is the minimum payout?
  • How frequently do they pay their affiliates?
  • What currency are the payments made in and what is the conversion rate of that currency to my own?

    • The final and most important question overall is will it result in conversions?

    Conclusion
    Given that all of that information is needed to be known about an affiliate program before making money with it, it’s no surprise that people have a hard time getting off the ground with affiliate programs. Nevertheless, with Adsense slumping affiliate programs are once again becoming a prominent way of making money online.

    What other questions would you want to know the answer to before joining an affiliate program?