Starting & Surviving In Affiliate Marketing

Have you ever wondered what you should be looking for when considering an affiliate program? Here are a few helpful hints to get you on the right track.

1. Will this cost you anything to join? With so many free to join affiliate programs you shouldn't need to join any where you need to pay to be a member.

2. When do you get paid for your hard work? The payment periods are different from one program to the next, so pick the one best suited to your financial commitments. Also, most of these programs have a minimum commission to be earned before you'll be paid.

3. Are they able to give you a sale per hit ratio, and if so what is it? The ratio will tell you how many people you should expect to send to the affiliate before a sale is made. This is crucial if you're paying per click, because you may end up paying out more for the traffic needed than you'll earn for the sale it generates.

4. How do the referrals you send get tracked, and how long for? This is essential because it's the way you'll be credited with the sale. Not all affiliate programs credit for the same length of time, and some people may not buy on the first visit, so you need to make sure that you're still credited when they do buy.

5. What statistics are available to you? You need to have up to date stats so as to find out how you're performing and where you need to improve. These stats need to include impressions (how often your link or banner was seen), hits (how often it was clicked on) and the sales.

6. How much do they pay in commission? Most affiliate programs, other than those dealing in downloadable products, will pay a commission of 5-20%. The commission rate makes the ratio of sale to hits all the more important. Of course if you're selling high value products then 5% can still be very lucrative.

Finding out the answers to these six questions will help you pick an affiliate program that'll give you the best grounding for your affiliate business - the next think is to pick something you're interested in that has an affiliate program fitting these criteria.

How is it that so many affiliate marketers can survive with all of the competition they have online? Here are three tips to help you join the survivors.

1. Don't send potential buyers straight to the sales page. You should have a webpage dedicated to each product you'll be promoting as an affiliate, these pages will be 'pre-selling' the product to the potential buyer.

You should include a review of the product, uses for the product that they might not have thought of, testimonials from other happy buyers and a description of the products benefits showing why the buyer couldn't possibly live without buying the product, right here, right now - and only from your affiliate link.

2. The free report. It's becoming a lot more common for affiliates to offer free reports from their presales page, and here's why.

People tend to have a fairly short attention span when looking at products online. They may get interrupted for some reason, or possibly decide to check other sites first - your free report will be keeping the product fresh in their minds.

Research has shown that people tend to buy after the seventh email, so if possible try to create a seven part course that will outline the uses and benefits of the product. However, don't make the course appear to be just a series of sales letters; you'll only annoy and then lose the potential buyer.

3. Targeted traffic for your product. You want to attract the people who are actually interested in the product to your website, if they aren't interested they won't go on to buy, meaning you've probably missed your target market - which can be an expensive mistake if you're paying for the traffic.

A free way of generating targeted traffic is to write articles that will be read by potential buyers of the product. You'll need to write at least 2, 300-500 word articles, per week and submit them to the sites your target market visits. The reason for writing so many articles is that on average you'll get one sale per 100 visitors - the more articles you have the more potential visitors, and therefore sales, you'll get.

As obvious as some of these tips may seem, not everyone uses them. Start using them today and make money while others are failing.