 |
 |
|
|
|
It is our goal to provide you with
information on the best of the best internet businesses and small
business tools. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Affiliate Marketing Success Model
An affiliate program is where a company offers
to pay you a certain amount of money for either a click through
from your site, or a fixed amount for a lead (where the visitor
signs up for a newsletter, etc.) or a percentage of a purchase
made by a visitor as a result of a click through.
Because there are literally tens of thousands of
affiliate programs on the Internet these days that are covering
just about every product and service you could imagine. Finding
the right affiliate marketing program can be a difficult task,
but it does pay off; so it's well worth the effort.
If you're new to affiliate marketing,
here's a good list of things that you can do to find the right
programs for you:
1. Define who your audience is (also called a target
market). For example: Do you have general traffic or specific
types of visitors? Is your audience mainly comprised of a
particular age demographic? Male/Female? If it's possible, first
narrow down what kind of potential shoppers you might have
visiting your site. This is again called ‘finding your target
audience’. Remember to write everything down.
Secondly, you have to decide which industries fit in best with
your audience. Before you can start looking for affiliate
programs, you have to decide what kind of stuff would appeal
most to that audience you've just defined. In the above example
we're dealing with middle aged women who were looking for
entertainment (maybe they were at a chat site, reading stories,
playing games, whatever). Then try to decide what your target
audience is willing to spending a little money on. Write this
down too. Actually, just for the record, write it all down!
2. Find out if there are any good affiliate programs that
sell that stuff. I know that this sounds like a given, but you'd
be surprised how many affiliates put up affiliate programs
because they pay high commissions, only to find out it doesn't
matter because no-one's buying anything.
Here is a good formula to remember always:
No buyers = no money!
Think about it this way; if your web site relates to your
interests, would you buy it? Now what do you think about
applying that theory to the audience you just defined? Who might
they buy from? Now you have to try to narrow it down even
further by using the programs that have the best reputation,
commissions, marketing materials, and of course trying to tie it
all into offers for the actual BUYER.
This part should be easiest if you apply it personally. Use your
common sense about the price of the products or services you
will be marketing for these programs; they might pay 50%
commissions, but do they charge twice what they should to the
buyer? If so would you be willing to pay those prices? Of course
you are going to want good commissions, but you also need to
market something people will actually buy or else you will not
get any at all, which usually means fair prices from the
sellers! You might earn less per sale, but think about the
volume of sales, and the right balance that makes you the most
money.
3. Avoid any affiliate marketing programs that offer crap
deals for the buyer. Compare the commission structures, and try
to find programs with a good history of conversions and prompt
payments. You need to push affiliate programs that have good
commissions structures and good conversions (how many visitors
does it take to get a sale?) You also want to make sure you get
paid!
4. DON'T FORGET TO READ THE AFFILIATE TERMS FIRST! You
might be surprised how many affiliate programs have some terms
buried in their fine print that don't work in your favor that is
why I gave you a sample merchant contract to look through so
that you can get an idea of the terms that may be inside of
them.
When it comes to how many sponsors do you need to start with you
should consider how much money you have first. If you're just
starting out, it's best to try out a few sponsors that will
gauge which will perform best. How many programs should you
start with? Try out however many good, related programs there
are that you can give a reasonable 'chance' to promote in a
reasonable amount of time. Remember whoever sponsors your
website is investing in your abilities too.
If you have lots of traffic on your website, you might be able
to rotate dozens of sponsors across your site. If you only have
a couple hundred visitors a month, you should limit yourself to
only a few, because you don't have the audience to support a
larger test of affiliate programs. You need to send a fair bit
of traffic to an affiliate program before you can truly gauge
it's performance, and you probably don't want to be in the
'testing phase' for months on end so you should limit yourself
accordingly.
Finally, you should begin by knowing that sending 5 visitors to
an affiliate link without a sale is simply not a fair test.
Depending on what you're selling and who you're trying to sell
to it can take a lot of traffic to start seeing revenue.
If you remove affiliate programs without giving
them a fair shake, you could be cheating yourself out of income;
that next visitor may have been your first sale. The moral here
is again to BE PATIENT!
|
|
|
|
