Choosing the Right Affiliate Program

In the March 2008 edition of No-Nonsense News I wrote an article entitled “What is Affiliate Marketing?” The following article is the second in a series about Affiliate Marketing. Enjoy!

How to Choose the Right Affiliate Program

There are a lot of affiliate programs out there to choose from.  It’s often difficult to know which are the best programs to promote.  Here are a few tips to help you find the best affiliate programs:

Lifetime cookies

A good affiliate program will offer lifetime cookies. You may be wondering what a lifetime cookie is. For that matter, you may be wondering what a cookie is.

Most of us have come to know cookies as those tasty little round treats best had with a tall glass of ice cold milk. However, the cookie I am referring to is a parcel of text sent to your computer from various websites you visit. The purpose of the cookie is to store information about you, then retransmit the data back to the originating website during a return visit. Most cookies are created with a expiry date, a lifetime cookie is one in which the information is stored indefinitely or until you delete it.

So why would a good affiliate program offer lifetime cookies? The lifetime cookie provides your website the capability to refer a visitor (to your affiliate product) once, and earn commissions on all future sales for a lifetime. Unfortunately, some shopping cart systems and vendors don’t support this feature, which isn’t so great for you – the affiliate. When looking for a good program, try to find one that supports life-time cookies. Remember sometimes it takes customers months to make a purchase.

Training and Customer Service

A good program will provide training tools and resources for their affiliates.  Ideally, they should have a member’s area where you can log in and download promotional materials, your affiliate links and check your sales stats and commission earned. 

Good communication is also important. If you email an affiliate program manager with a question and don’t hear back from them or hear back from them 2 weeks later, move on. Imagine what would happen if you ever have a real problem with payments or an important question?  A good affiliate program manager will respond to your questions in a timely manner.  By the same token, make sure you read all the materials provided on the website before contacting the program manager.

Sales Pages that Convert

Before promoting a specific product, the sales copy must clearly outline the benefits of purchasing the product.  Does it look like it will produce sales?  If the sales page layout is sloppy, or the copy contains grammar and spelling errors, or simply appears unprofessional, your sales may be slow or non-existent – no matter how good the product is. 

Now that you know some of the things you should look for in a good program, here are a few things you should wary of!

Advertisements and Google Adsense

If you’re promoting an ebook and sending customers to someone else’s sales page, be wary if it contains Google Ads or other types of advertisement. If you’re working hard to send traffic to that page, it’s not fair that your hard work will be used to make someone else money without you getting paid in return.

If you see a sales page containing ads, choose another product.

High Sales Revenue Minimum

Watch out for programs that require you to achieve a minimum sales revenue before being paid.  For example if the commission on a $20 eBook is 10% (that’s $2 per sale) and they ask you to accumulate a minimum of $200 dollars in commission before sending your payment, that’s a whole lot of books you need to sell before getting paid – 100 books to be exact. 

Some of these programs operate on the basis that affiliates will usually not make that many sales and they’ll never need to pay out.  It’s unfortunate but this does happen, so always review an affiliate program’s payment terms before promoting it.