When I got started with my internet marketing venture, my first source of income was from selling affiliate products.
I took an internet marketing course that encouraged me to use dropshippers, or to buy from wholesalers and ship the products myself.
The problem with that was that no one was dropshipping what I was looking to sell, and I couldn't afford to spend enough to buy the products at their minimum amounts, and had no place to store them.
The only option left was to use affiliate marketing.
What Is Affiliate Marketing? (if you know this stuff skip to the next section) Now if at this time you don't really know what affiliate marketing is, It's basically selling products (either physical and informational) for another company through links placed on your site to receive a commission from the sales.
Example: XYZ company sells radio parts.
Your website is about radio repair, so you partner up with XYZ and place links from their site on yours.
When someone clicks on that link and places an order you can make a commission.
However, many people don't realize that making that sale is just not that easy.
If it was, then a lot more people would be making much more money.
Their is a whole world out their that can stop your commissions dead in it's tracks.
It really all depends on what you're trying to do exactly because their are many different ways to do affiliate marketing.
From my experience most people try to sell products directly through a website just like i did in the beginning.
You build a niche website, and then you use affiliate products to make money.
In my case I used PPC advertising to get traffic, there are other ways like using SEO, but I'm not going to go through that here (I'll cover that in another article).
There is so much hype about how much money you can make with affiliate marketing but no one seems to be telling you what to look out for.
It's not all rainbows and sunshine despite what you've been told.
This CAN be a very profitable business venture, but there are a few things you should know first.
Affiliate Program Selection Their are hundreds and thousands of affiliate programs out there, so how do you select a good one? Well a good place to start is by looking at some of the top affiliate networks out there.
The big networks track everything for you and usually have daily updated statistics you can follow.
You can go out individually and search for specific websites that sell products you'd like to promote and checking them out to see if they have an affiliate program, and if they don't you can contact them personally to see if they can work something out with you.
With affiliate programs there are a few things that you should look at before deciding to work with a specific company.
First is, how long have they had an affiliate program? If you're just beginning it's best not to take too many risks, go with companies that have been around for at least 3 years.
Secondly, what is the commission rate that you'll be receiving? Now this range can be quite huge depending on the type of product you are looking to promote.
Physical products usually range between 4 -15% while information products can be as high as 75%.
The thing to remember is that your goal is to make a profit.
You have to find out how much you're going to have to spend (that's if you decide to use ppc) to make that sale.
Thirdly, you want to know how long the cookie duration is for.
With some companies it's longer than others, and this can play a tremendous part in what you earn and what you don't.
You don't want a company that's only going to pay if someone buys directly at that moment, generally a 15 to 30 day return cookie is desirable at the minimum.
Here are some other very important things you need to know about affiliate marketing before you pick a company to work with.
You need to know how you get sales because every company has different rules.
Some companies work with a first click attribute, and others work with a last click attribute.
So, let me break this down for you.
A first click attribute, means that if you're an affiliate and someone clicks on your link and then doesn't buy, and then let's say 3 days later that person goes to another website and clicks on an affiliate link they have and then makes the purchase, YOU still get the sale.
If the company you're working with has a last click attribute and the same situation occurs as above THEY (the other affiliate website) will get the sale.
So Why is This Important to You? Well, whether you're doing PPC or doing SEO, your positioning can make or break you like that.
All your hard work and efforts will mean nothing and your sales will be hijacked if you don't know the rules the company you're working with flies by.
You also need to do research to see who else is promoting the same products where you are looking to promote too.
If you're working with a first click attribute you want to be above your competitors in the search or PPC results, if it's last click you want to be after them.
This is something so many people overlook and wonder why they aren't making any money.
So, if the program doesn't clearly state which one it honors, contact them immediately to find out.
Here's another extremely important fact that you need to know right now.
Most companies will deny this, or simply withhold.
Regardless of the cookie duration, and regardless of the first or last click attribute, you can and you most likely will lose the sale if you're advertising where the company you're promoting is advertising.
Example: Your company is promoting products for XYZ company.
You're promoting for the phrase squiggily doo in Google PPC, XYZ company themselves are also promoting products under the same phrase.
It does not matter whose link is clicked first or last, if a customer clicks on that paid listing that XYZ company has there, you will NOT get the sale.
Bing, bang, boom, end of discussion.
You can argue through the depths of time about the ethics of this approach, but in their minds they have that paid link and if it gets clicked on they are taking sole credit for the sale.
So make sure to be aware if your advertiser is promoting under the same PPC phrases as you.
Now, not all companies do this, and believe me there are a lot more far shadier tactics used by affiliate companies than this.
So try to refrain from competing with your advertisers as it will not get you very far.
I just want you to know that I have tested this, and it is not just theory.
I really hope you enjoyed this article and got some valuable information from it.
I don't want you to come away from this thinking that all affiliate programs are bad because there are some really great ones you can make a ton of money with.
I just wanted to make you aware of the many things that can stand in the way of you getting your well deserved commissions.
There is just so much information about affiliate marketing that their is no way I could have covered it all in one article.
I'm planning on posting some more articles in the very new future.