How to Wisely Pick Your Affiliate Program

In the past few years, affiliate marketing services have sky-rocketed in popularity. People are jumping on this wave by the millions as one of the best and easiest ways to start an online home company. Affiliate services provide the ability for retailers to recruit large armies of sales people who are paid for the performance they produce.

Affiliate incentives can be very large, and several thousands of dollars a month can be won by a professional affiliate marketer. This win-win situation has resulted in an explosion in the amount of affiliate services that affiliate marketers have access to.

Many questions have emerged with this growth of affiliate opportunities, such as: How do you select the best affiliate program for you? In a program, what attributes do you look for and what gives you a fair chance of making a sustainable income? Here are several tips to help you analyze affiliate services and to help you avoid wasting time and resources.

What Does the Program Pay for Commissions?

It is very important that you know how much you can expect from a sale to receive. In investing time and cash marketing a product that pays very small commissions, there is no point. You could end up spending more on ads than you do on revenue. If you have found a niche market where you can sell large amounts of goods and make huge commissions on your sales volume, it is probably better to stick with selling products with a high commission value.

How much traffic do they get on their website?

Try to discover the amount of traffic the website of the affiliate owner is already attracting. For doing this analysis, Alexa.com is a really useful method. The merchant gets a decent amount of traffic if the website is ranked in the top 100,000, so it's likely that there might already be too many affiliates. It might not be successful if it is rated below 500,000, or it may be a golden chance to make some real money by being one of the first affiliates!

If their website has a low traffic rating, always study a merchant's product. When you can afford it, it might be a good idea to purchase the product yourself. You might otherwise do a search to find out whether there is any bad feedback on the internet about it. Since many people are in the habit of criticizing affiliate programs with little to really endorse their comments, be careful who you listen to. It would probably be a smart idea to stay away from that affiliate program if you find a large number of negative reviews with small positive ones.

How Often Are Affiliate Commissions Paid?

Every week, some affiliate programs pay commissions; some once a month, others pay only every fifth. If you are going to have financial control over your company, it is vital that you know how often you should expect a pay check. If you have to wait a long time before you get paid, do you have the financial capital to continue to sell a product? Finding out the minimum commission that you have to receive before you get paid will also be smart.

Does the Affiliate program Use Cookies for Tracking?

On their first visit to a merchant's website, several consumers do not buy. It is also necessary for the retailer to use cookies for their affiliate scheme, so that if the customer returns and buys at a later date, you get credit. Check out how long it lasts for cookies. The longer the cookies last, the higher the likelihood that you will get paid!

Do Subsequent Sales Pay for the Affiliate Program?

Some programs will only pay commission on purchases that come through a direct connection from your site by customers visiting their site. If they visit the merchants' site directly, they pay you nothing on any future transactions that the customer makes. It is vital that if you are to create a sustainable affiliate company, you get paid no matter what route the customer returns.

What does the Affiliate Program Provide Marketing Resources?

Look at the nature and efficiency of the tools they have for marketing. Can they have posts, advertising, or other material that you can use to place on your website? Can they have free guides that you can send to your list, exclusive deals, free viral e-books, or product samples? If the marketing material they provide is successful, then it is probable that their affiliates will receive good support from the organization.

It can be difficult to find the best affiliate program for you. The best advice is to do your own studies, obey the above advice, and listen to your intuition. Use the above questions to help you find an affiliate program that helps you to meet your financial targets. You never know... Maybe you might just hit affiliate marketing gold!