How To Find Good Affiliate Programs

When you decide to become an Affiliate Marketer, the first choice you have to make is what products or services you'll promote. Hopefully you've already researched and found a lucrative market to target, and you have a promotion plan in place to start making money. Now you need to choose good affiliate products, services, programs, and merchants that fit into your overall niche and marketing plan.Choosing affiliate programs can be very difficult. For many beginners, it can be a difficult trial and error process for a while. But it doesn't have to be if you apply these key points when deciding on a good affiliate programs.1. What's the Commission you'll be paid? This tends to be the first thing new affiliates look at, because they want to know how much money they can make with each sale. And most people choose to promote products which offer very high commission rates. What they don't realize is that sometimes you can make much more money with lower affiliate commissions.Really, it's not the commission rate that's the most important. It's the dollar amount you'll be paid. If you choose to promote a product or service that sells for $25 just because you'll earn 75 of the sale, you're only going to get $18.75 each time you make a sale.While that might look good, there could be much better options. Suppose another product sells for $100, but it only offers 30 commissions. Would you pass it by just because the percent commissions “look" lower? Unfortunately many would, and often do. However, on examination you'll realize something: 30 of a $100 sale is $30. Almost twice what you can make with the 75 commissioned product.So don't make the mistake of choosing products or services based solely on the commission percentage amounts. Think about the actual dollars you'll make instead with a good affiliate program.2. Conversion Ratio is the next important factor to consider. If you send 100 targeted visitors to an affiliate sales page, how many of those visitors will actually pull out their credit card and make a purchase?In this case, percentages count a lot. If 1 of the people buy, that's a 1 conversion ratio, which means 1 person out of 100 will buy on average. If however, a product has a 10 conversion ratio, then 10 people out of 100 will buy.If you combine conversion ratios with commission rates, you can get further insight on which product might be the best to promote. Let's say the 75 commission product has a 2 conversion ratio, and the 30 one has a 3. Since you already know you make more actual dollars with the 30 product, it's a no-brainer to stick with it because it also has a higher conversion ratio. However, if the 75 product has a 10 conversion and the 30 product has a measly 0.5 conversion ratio, you would probably change your mind about which one to promote. Because no matter how much money a product can earn you, it will not be profitable if people won't buy it.3. Now let's look at the Sales Page. This is a step many new affiliate marketers miss. If you visit the sales page that you'll be sending prospects to, and you see Google AdSense on that page, it might not be a great idea to promote it. Why? Because if you send visitors to the page and they don't buy, they might click the merchant's Adsense Ads and the merchant make money while leaving you out of the picture.The same applies if the merchant has other affiliate links on their page. If they've signed up to someone else's affiliate program, and they put those affiliate links onto the page you're trying to make sales from, they might make other affiliate sales from the links but again you would earn no money.Another problem can sometimes crop up with merchants who sell physical products. It's not uncommon to find a phone number on the sales pages. Often this is a toll free number. The merchant needs to have a contact number so sales aren't lost, but if they make the number huge and in the way of everything else, chances are the potential customer you sent to the page will just pick up the phone and bypass you all together. Some merchants handle this issue well though, and they put a referral code next to their phone number. When the prospective customer calls, they ask for that code or referral number which tracks back to you, so you still earn commissions from the sales.4. What are the Merchant's Terms? This is another key thing that most new affiliates don't realize they need to closely examine. Some merchants put sneaky exception clauses into their terms of service, and affiliates don't realize they won't get paid for various types of sales. Some for instance, might say that affiliates will not earn commissions on any orders taken over the phone. Others might say affiliates can only earn commissions on certain items, but not any others. I've even seen some merchant terms which state the affiliate can only make sales commissions once, ever. So even the customer bought something every single day, you'd only be paid for the very first thing they bought. You need to be alert and stay away from these kinds of programs.5. What are the Payment Terms? Related to the previous item, you also need to pay attention to the payment terms. Some merchants will only send commission to you every three months. Some will not pay you until you've generated a minimum of $100 in commissions. And some will not pay you unless you first generate a certain amount of sales, then wait a certain amount of time, then request the payment. Yes, there are affiliate programs out there that will not automatically send you the money, which you earned. If you have to actually ask for it, then maybe it's a signal to keep looking until you find a good affiliate program.There are many more things to pay attention to when selecting good affiliate programs but these are some of the most important. In general though, do your research and find out exactly how the program works and if possible, find out how other affiliates feel about the program before committing too much of your time or money to learn the painful way.There are many great affiliate programs for you to choose from so you can start building a solid Residual Income Stream. If you want to learn more, you can visit my website and see why Success University is our top recommendations.

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