Generating Income With Affiliate Programs
As you can probably tell my focus this year is on building up and developing the website just as last year was about launching the jewellery party side.
So I’ve been researching and exploring promoting the website. Something I really don’t like about advertising is it is expensive, hard to measure results, can completely miss the point and has a limited shelf life. I’ve tended to avoid it but periodically will give it a go and miss the money out of my bank account and lament the trickle of the return.
So to me I’d rather pay advertisers for each sale. They bring me sales I bring them payment sort of logic.
The obvious online solution is an Affiliate program where you can choose how you pay others who promote your business.
Corey Rudl calls it the “ultimate performance-based advertising” because you are only paying for results – nothing airy fairy there! In his Internet Marketing Centre’s Insider Secrets course his chapter on Affiliates is the biggest one and makes the comment that he earns $1,000,000 per year from sales coming from his affiliates. I like that!
The affiliate program lets other people promote your business and for every sale made because of them they get a referral fee.
Having a army of affiliates promoting your business increases sales with no risk. If they sign up and sell nothing for you there’s no cost to you. If they sign up and sell goods you both get paid!
There are a range of ways to structure the referral fee, including payment for site visitors, flat rate or percentage commission for each sale, or payment for each lead.
Personally I like the idea of paying for sales made over any of the others but that’s because of the structure of my business with products.
Paying for clicks through to your site can turn out to be really expensive with little return. To make Pay Per Click (PPC) work your landing page has to be able to generate sales really well. This is possible and more likely if you invest in a specialist in writing internet marketing copy that sells (which is very good to do anyway). But paying per sale still looks better to me.
You can setup your own affiliates program but for me that’s way too much work, too expensive and too hard. I’d rather use a service that already has a collection of members who are eager to promote and be paid for it.
I’d rather pay a small fee, either monthly or commission (prefer a small commission fee) for using someone else’s network of affiliate members and software for looking after account payment and services.
I think it would be important to keep track of who is promoting your business – who they are and how they are doing it.
I really like the idea of my search engine ratings to get a boost simply by having affiliates linking directly to my site and to specific pages within the site as this is one way engines rank.
So where do you find out about Affiliate Programs? Try 10BestAffiliates.com and AssociatePrograms.com for listings and info. I found the WilsonWeb.com ebooks really useful as well as their website articles. I’m WilsonWeb.com ebook on Affiliate Management Software useful and got it when I signed up for a regular newsletter with 12 ebooks as a bonus – it was about $US50
Just a tip with selecting an Affiliate program to promote your business, look for an international one that recognises there is big wide world outside of the US. I was recommended clixgalore.com because they can handle a range of currencies for payments.
The Internet Marketing Centre’s Insider Secrets is excellent for it’s affiliate information as well as it’s extended internet marketing material. It is a good investment for your business.
Affiliate programs are the perfect win-win partnership. You can also become an affiliate yourself and promote other businesses and generate income. So you can be on both sides of the deal – promote your own site through an affiliate program as well as promoting others by being an affiliate.
If you’re thinking you’d love your own business one day a place to start learning and making your dream a reality is launch your own blog about a subject you love and have because an affiliate. The advertising on your blog generates income for you as you build site traffic. Check out blogher.org for learning more and creating your own blog. 🙂
So get exploring and see what this wonderful big wide world of ours has and how you can be part of it!