Affiliate programmes are simply commission-based business opportunities. With an Affiliate Programme, you get paid for sending customers to other company’s websites.

Joining an affiliate is the quickest, easiest, risk free way of starting to make money online if you haven’t got your own product or service, website, money, time or experience in trading online.

You do not have to have any products or service of your own to sell, a website, money to start up your own business in order to reap the huge benefits online trading has to offer.

You do not have to do all the hard work of stocking products, administrative work, shipping orders and all the other bits that businesses have to deal with on daily basis, your main aim is to find the right customer and direct them to your partners site through your unique link and so long as they buy your commission is made.

How it works:

When you sign up to become an affiliate for a company, you receive a special link with your own unique affiliate ID embedded into it to promote that company’s products/services. Simply add your new affiliate link to your website or in your emails, newsletter or anywhere you want to promote the products and services. Then when people use your link to get to the other company’s website and buy a product or service from them, you earn a commission.

You benefit from the commission earned and the affiliate company benefits from sales it would not have otherwise made without your promotional efforts.

How to join an Affiliate Programme

Joining an affiliate is the quickest, easiest, risk free way of starting to make money online if you haven’t got your own product or service, money or experience in trading online.

As with any marketing venture, you need to be careful in the selection of an affiliate program.

The benefit of an affiliate programme is that it gives you another way to make money from your website visitors or from your other means of promotion. Instead of selling the visitors a product yourself, you send them to a partner and take a cut.

The key to success is to choose the right programme, right from the beginning.

A lot of commercial sites run affiliate programmes and that’s because they know that they only have to pay a commission if a sale is actually made; it’s a proven way to generate revenue without risk.

What that means for you is that when it comes to choosing an affiliate programme, you’re going to have a huge range to choose from and what it all boils down to though is product and price.

While it might be tempting to go for the programme that pays the highest commissions, the program me won’t pay you a penny if your visitors won’t go there or won’t buy once they get there. You have to be certain that the service you’re promoting is of genuine interest to the kind of visitors you get to your website or mail your promotions to.

Though some of the companies whose product you will be promoting give you a free website from which to promote their goods (you have no control over these websites because it is not you property and you cannot promote any other product not relating to their company), for best results and independence it is advisable to create a small site independent of the companies whose product you are promoting in addition to the free sites, and use this to promote all your affiliate programmes.

Research for the most popular sites, and negotiate banner campaigns and link exchanges.

But it’s much easier to find an affiliate program operating in a field you’re familiar with, and use that programme to earn extra cash.

The most lucrative affiliates are:

those with monthly subscriptions because each month the customers who bought the subscriptions pay their fee you gat commissions on each one of them

Those with repeat buys like health supplements, gym membership, beauty products and a whole host of others

Fast selling products

 Selecting an affiliate programme that is lucrative and right for you:

Don’t accept less than 40% commission. You can find affiliate programmes with great payment structures and high percentages of the purchase price in just about every field. In fact, many affiliate programmes pay out 50%-80% depending on the type of product or service.

Look for affiliate programmes that have the following characteristics:

Commissions’ payable weekly or fortnightly – (monthly is not too bad but any period of more than I month is too long to have your commission locked up somewhere else in my opinion)

Pays out over 50% of revenues back in commissions

Operates in several countries and it is a 24/7 business

You can participate FREE for as long as you want, with no obligation

 Look for programmes that offer a wide variety of promotional tools to put on your web page, including text links, banners, articles, brandable e-books, etc.

Opportunity for you to share in company-wide sales/commissions every month

Can earn ongoing, residual income from one-time sales

Your own personalized Website provided free (with free maintenance)

Personal mentors provided for free personal support

Company handles all orders –payment, shipping, customer service for you

Can create substantial income giving away free stuff

Marketable in every country worldwide (make money everywhere!)

Good reputation and track record in on line trading

Extensive free training & resources to help you get started fast

Potential to earn huge amounts per annum

Support available 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week

Can earn unlimited override commissions on unlimited levels

Products available/shippable worldwide

Tools provided for easy and free contact with your entire sales team

Can market virtually ANY product or service in the world

You can market on or off line with their extensive marketing tools

Has their own private-labelled products

Simple, easy-to-understand compensation plan

Managing and Tracking Your Affiliate Programmes

The key to any business is to promote your products and services to people who need them. Your affiliate business is no different. In order to earn commissions you must put your products in front of the people who need them. The beauty of marketing affiliate programmes is that anybody can do it and be very successful at doing it.   There are no barriers and there is good money to be made if you have the right focus and attitude for making money and a good marketing strategy.

Organizing your programme

There are many software programs available on the Internet that organize and keep track of all data associated with affiliate programs.  These programmes maintain databases to do with information about all your affiliate programmes such as: Programme Name, Date joined or created, Contact Name, URL, Email Address, ID, Password, 1st Tier Percent, 1st Tier Sale, 2nd Tier Percent, 2nd Tier Sale, Total Income and additional comments.

The best affiliate programmes will provide these detailed statistics for you at no extra charge.

To find out more click on:

Have a Successful Affiliating and look for my next article on How To Use Auto Responders to Automate Your Email Marketing Process.

Affiliate Programme Watch

A Boadu