Ten Tips to Help Select Affiliate Programs & Make Money from Them
By, Bill Platt

SUPPLEMENTAL INTERNET INCOME

Many publishers and webmasters undertake the process of picking and adding affiliate programs to add a few extra bucks to their bottom lines.

When you have managed to pick a winner, the selected affiliate
program can develop enough additional income to make it worth
while to continue to offer the program to your visitors.

Let's face it. Not everyone who visits your website will be
interested in your primary products or services. The truth is
that you cannot be everything to everyone. So, it does make
sense to offer some additional products or services on outbound
links to other sites that offer affiliate's an opportunity to
earn a commission.

TIPS CONCERNING AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

* You should always choose an affiliate program based on how
many levels they pay to affiliates. If the program only
pays on what you sell, I suggest avoiding the program.
The only time it would actually make sense to use a program
that only pays on your own sales is when the program is
offering hard goods that must be snail mailed to the buyer.
If you are using the affiliate link in an article, the
affiliate program you use should pay on at least two tiers.
In this fashion, if you turn someone else onto a program,
then you will be able to earn on sales they make as well.
Who knows? The person who signs up on your recommendation may
be able to sell thousands of ice cream cones to an eskimo.

* All outbound links on your website should contain the HREF
property *target=_blank*. By setting the target to _blank,
you are telling your visitor's browser to open the link in
a new browser window. This will force your visitor to make
a concious decision to leave your site, by making them
pro-actively close the window your website resides in.

* More so in an article than on a website, you should provide
the link to your affiliate page through a Redirect link on
your domain. From the webmaster's perspective, this makes
sense because you can track the traffic to your affiliate
website by checking your traffic logs. From the article
writer's perspective, it is imperative since most publishers
will trim off the affiliate id from your published URL. If
you give the publisher a link from your own domain, then
there is not an obvious affiliate id to remove from the
link.

* You should observe the click-through ratio's (CTR's) on
all of your affiliate links. Try to make a determination
as to why a particular affiliate link does or does not
generate good CTR's. Perhaps it is the presentation of
the link, or perhaps it is the offer that is being made.
Make changes to try to improve on your results, and take
action to remove the program if it does not generate good
results.

* You should also observe the click-through-to-sales ratio's
also. At a certain point, you should make the decision that
a certain affiliate program has failed at their end. If you
are sending them lots of traffic, but you are not earning
income from that traffic, then you should make the
determination as to whether you want to create your own
sales page for their product or give up on them altogether.

* You should always strongly consider using the affiliate
programs that you promote. By using the programs, you can
offer people an honest assessment of the programs that you
are promoting. In many cases, the personal testimonial of
a product or service will help sell that product or service.

* Don't be afraid to write your own ad copy or develop your
own display banners to promote the program. By developing
custom promotional materials, you are able to distinguish
yourself from the thousands of other affiliates promoting
the same programs that you are promoting.

* Put a deadline on the profit expectations that you have
from a single affiliate program. Let's say for example
you do as I do. I give programs six months from signup
to produce results. If the results cannot be improved
upon, I remove programs from my site. (I will be removing
four programs from my site this week.)

* When you have found a winner, step up your promotional
efforts on those programs. Don't be afraid to tell people
when you have found a winner. My winners are:

* Drop Shippers Directory - http://thePhantomWriters.com/dsd
If you want to find hard goods to sell online or on Ebay,
then you will want to explore DSD to find wholesale
companies and drop-shippers who can supply you with those
products.

* Quikonnex - http://thePhantomWriters.com/quikonnex
Have you heard about the benefits of publishing an ezine
via Dynamically Created RSS/XML Feeds? If not, then please
take a few minutes to explore the promise of spam-free,
accusation-free publishing with the Quikonnex Publishing
System.

JOB BOARDS

* As a final note, you should always try to select your
affiliate programs based on offerings that your target
visitors would actually be interested in. Although these
visitors may not be interested in your offerings, there
was something about your site that drew them to you, in the
first place. So give them the chance to buy other products
or services similar to your own.

At every point in the process, your goal should be to leverage
the traffic you do have into money that you will have. It is
far better to have two dollars on the hundred dollar purchase,
than it is to have zero dollars on any purchase. If you are
going to lose your traffic to others anyway, make the conscious
decision now to turn some of that traffic back into dollars.

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