Affiliate Marketing Programs

An online affiliate program or internet marketing affiliate program is an organization which connects affiliates to product owners. Affiliates get access to links which tag a visitor with their specific affiliate code so that they get paid the correct commission on any purchases made by a visitor they referred.

Programs tend to specialize in the different types of products, so many affiliates join more than one in order to have access to a variety of products, spread their efforts and not have all their eggs in one basket. However, most programs have minimum earnings you have to meet before they pay out, so spreading your efforts too thin may result in a long wait before you get paid.

Most programs are free to join for affiliates, though product owners normally have to pay to join. All programs have specific requirements you must meet in order to join, some more stringent than others.

As well as the big players in the market, which act as gateways for hundreds of product owners and thousands of products, some companies run their own individual affiliate programs which you can usually find via their company website.

Affiliate programs for Digital Download Products

The best known of these is Clickbank, which also has the widest range of products you can sell. These cover the gamut from recipe books to wedding planners, Adwords instruction manuals to compost making manuals. Many are ebooks: some are membership sites (where the affiliate gets a commission every month the purchases stays a member), video or audio products. If you can download it, you can find it on Clickbank.

Other downloadable product affiliate programs are PayDotCom, RevenueWire and oneNetworkDirect.

Physical Product Affiliate Programs

Physical product affiliate programs let you sell everything - including the kitchen sink - from the comfort of your own website, without the worries of inventory, warehousing or employees. The best known is program probably Commission Junction but others include Linkshare and ShareASale.

Affiliate programs for Services

Commission Junction and ShareASale both offer service "products" through their programs such as insurance, web hosting, credit cards etc.

These are some questions to ask yourself when reviewing a program, whether on of the big players or a specific company:

1. Do I know enough about the products to be able to sell them?


2. Are these products selling well?


3. Are there referral bonuses if I sign others up to the program?


4. How are payments sent? Will the method work for me? Is there a waiting period or threshold before I get paid?


5. What kind of a reputation does the program have? What do other affiliates say about it?


6. How easy are the affiliate links to set up? Does the program create them for you?


7. What's the support like? Try calling the affiliate support line (if there is one) or emailing and asking some questions. Is there plenty of support information available on the program's website?


8. What kind of reporting do you get? The more in-depth stats the program gives you about where your visitors went and what they did when they got there, the better you can fine-tune your efforts.


9. Sale notification - do you have the option to get notified every time you get a sale? Can you turn it off?

The more you can find out about the affiliate program ahead of time, the fewer surprises you'll get and the more satisfied you will be down the road.