Who should an affiliate marketer promote Famous well-known brands or smaller companies?

You probably have noticed as an affiliate that there are thousands of different affiliate programs available to promote in 4 large affiliate marketing networks and many smaller networks and of course the many in-house programs for individual merchants.

One of my first questions as a new affiliate was "Which merchants or which affiliate programs should I join?". It can be very baffling.  How do you decide when you are still green?  The answer is really not that complicated.

First of all, you must consider the website you are working on. Instead of joining every program under the sun, pick the topic of your website and look for programs for that topic or issue.  Don't worry about the name of the company yet.

Secondly, Look at those merchants/affiliate programs and check the cookie duration and the commission percent.  The cookie duration is the time from when the website visitor clicks on an affiliate link during which the affiliate will get credit for a sale. If the cookie duration is 30 days then if a visitor makes a purchase before the 30 days are over, the affiliate earns the commission. If the visitor returns to the merchant site on day 31 and makes a purchase, no commission is paid.

You should avoid promoting affiliate programs with short cookies because most visitors don't really buy on the first day unless the products are very cheap consumables. The more expensive a product is, the more likely that it will not be purchased on the first day.  The merchant should offer a cookie of at least 30 days. 60 days or more is ideal.

The commission percent  is the percent of the sale not including shipping or handling that is paid to the affiliate. The percent will vary greatly, but in general you'll get around 10% for most tangible products and you should expect at least 20% for digital products since no manufacturing was involved and digital products can be e-mailed or downloaded automatically so no human was involved in processing the order.

You'll find many, probably, hundreds or thousands of websites telling you to only sell digital products that offer 50% commission or higher. I completely disagree. Most of those programs (typically offered on Clickbank) are crap,  yes worthless junk.  Not only that but those products are expensive crap.  Charging the same price or more than a print book would cost.  You might make a sale, but the visitor will not be very likely to come back to your site for products, advice, etc.  Can you sleep well at night knowing that you indirectly sold someone expensive junk?  I cannot.

I am not saying that digital products are bad. Many digital products are very nice. It is just that the ones offering 50% or more in commission are typically crap.  I have successfully promoted quality digital products (that were also much cheaper than the crappy ones) and best of all I can sleep well at night knowing that I let visitors know about products that meet their needs.  Electronics, computers, and books typically give the lowest commission of around 4%.

After you review merchants in the same category as your website, apply to those that have a decent cookie and commission.  Many will reject you. Wait a couple days and see who has accepted you. During your wait, work on your website design and add some non-affiliate content.

Look at your list of approved affiliate programs. You'll see a mix of famous well-known brands and others that you've never heard of. Here is the simple answer.

Do tests and see what works.  Some offer lower commissions and shorter cookies, but their websites have fewer leaks and great products with good prices. Others will offer high commissions but have few products or the products are much more expensive.

Promote each program separately and in the same way. After a month, check your conversions and total earnings for each one and compare them.  If the famous brand didn't convert into enough sales to make up for its lower commission percent then drop them.  At the end of the day the important thing is that you make money and that you can pay your bills.  Programs that don't convert should be dropped if you have competitor products on the same site that do convert. You need to remove the non-performing merchant's products because they are taking away clicks to the program that is working.

If none of your programs convert to any sales in a month then check your website and change the way that you are promoting them. Not every marketing method will work for everyone or every website.

Rejected by Affiliate Marketing Managers and Merchants?

Introduction

If you are going to do Affiliate marking or in other words, become an affiliate, you need to sign-up with merchants or outsourced programs. This can either be done through an affiliate network or via an in-house program. Regardless of whether you sign up with an affiliate program via a network or not you are going to be facing rejection. In fact many merchants and affiliate program managers are what I call deny-happy. Why, you ask, because they deny affiliate program applications from affiliates on a whim. Most don't even bother telling you why. Instead of letting you know why, they send a form letter with lots of possibilities which most likely none of which apply to you, or worse yet they just send a form letter saying that you are not a 'good fit' and that it doesn't reflect on you or your sites. They do not actually tell you on what it is actually based on.

Personal rejection and denial examples

Sometimes their replies are worse than their lack their of.  I had applied for the Target affiliate program thinking that their products would be a good match for a housewares site that I was just starting.  I got a reply from them saying that I had been denied because I was missing a Privacy Statement.  I don't know which site they were referring to so I went through each and every site that I had and I added a privacy statement and I e-mailed them. I got another reply stating that they couldn't find the privacy statement on my site. If the privacy statement were a snake, it would have bit them. Since I am patient, I sent the URL to a couple of them for two sites.I later got a form letter stating that I had been rejected from their affiliate program.  I made the extra effort to meet their requirements and they rejected me anyway and without comment. I did not bother continuing the application.

Another example is of the time around November that I had applied for TinyPrints's affiliate program. They sell greeting cards and considering how I have several websites about holidays, I thought that they'd be a good match. People often buy greeting cards and other cards for Christmas, right?  Anyway, I had applied for the program and got rejected with no comment. I reapplied to join and again I was rejected. I then contacted the affiliate program manager and I explained how I had holiday sites so it is relevant. I got a reply from the manager agreeing and telling me that I'd be approved. I reapplied several more times and each time I was denied.  I of course was very frustrated by this, so I e-mailed the AM and asked what was wrong and this time I was finally approved.

I started adding links to my very relevant websites and guess what? Not a single sale has tracked (registered) for this merchant although I get plenty of click-throughs from my websites. I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you are being denied by affiliate managers when applying for affiliate marketing programs, do not worry about it. Just promote their competitors.

 What you can do to reduce the chances of being rejected or having your affiliate application denied

There are different things that you can do to reduce the possibility that deny-happy affiliate manages and merchants will reject you.

1. Display in the affiliate network profile the most relevant websites first. I mean if you are applying for a housewares affiliate marketing program, list your housewares website as your main or primary site. Most affiliate managers are very lazy and they won't bother to even look at the names of your websites to see if a related site is listed.

2. Make sure that your listed websites are not "under construction". They should be up and running and be attractive with some content.

3. If you are rejected or denied and you really think that is a good program for you, then e-mail the affiliate manager and explain how you'd market their site and products on your relevant website.

4. If you truly think  that this program is the best and the e-mail didn't work, then look up the affiliate manager's telephone number and call them.

My recommendation

In all honesty, there are few good reasons for an affiliate manager to reject an affiliate. I'll go into reasons and excuses made by affiliate managers in another post.  You really should not bother with most of those companies. If you get rejected and your websites are good, look for another company in the market and sign up with them. Yes, that is right, sign up with a competitor. no, it isn't blood-lust or my desire to get back at them. It is simply the fact that you are working on a website and you need programs to promote.

The best affiliate management programs are the ones that auto-approve or approve applications within 24 hours. I think If I go through the affiliate programs that bring the best conversions, they all approved within 24 hours or immediately.

SEO - ALT tags vs Title tags - what are they for?

When should I use ALT and TITLE tags on my websites or blog websites?

Many people want to do SEO, Search Engine Optimization, but they don't put into practice some of the basic tasks that will often benefit greatly. Here is one of them. If you use images on a website and the images are related to the topic of the pages that they are on, you need to add both ALT and TITLE Tags to them, so that the search engines and people using text-based browsers know what they are for.

Alt tags show whatever text that is added to the HTML code when the image doesn't load whether it is corrupt, missing, or if the visitor has a text-based web browser. In Internet Explorer these tags will normally show up as hover text however this use is not covered by standards. When has Microsoft ever followed standards? On web browsers that follow standards, ALT tags correctly show only when an image does not.

It is important that any and all images that are related to your content contain ALT tags, otherwise a visitor will be very confused when an image does not load.

Title tags according to web standards and most web browsers are for hover or tool or tool tip text. The image loads and the text appears when the cursor is over the image. This is very useful for SEO because the search engines, like Google, know what your image is about and use the text like keywords which in the end can bring you more relevant traffic.

Title tags are also very useful because they allow you to add descriptions, or more description, to your images without taking up more space, so you see there is also an educational benefit to adding TITLE tags.

Examples of ALT and TITLE tags

Here are some examples of ALT and TITLE tags used for website images.

Notice Images 1 and 2 contain both ALT and TITLE Text so the information will be viewable on Text-browsers and the description will appear as hover or tool tip text. If you see "relevant ALT text" with your image then your web browser is not standards compliant.

Sample Image 1:

HTML CODE USED:

Sample Image 2:

HTML CODE USED:

Sample Image 3:

HTML CODE USED:

Notice how Image 3 (which doesn't exist) does not load and therefore the ALT text is displayed. Normally, the ALT tag would be the name of the image.

What kind of affiliate marketing websites can I build?

OK, so you have already read my articles on what affiliate marketing is, and affiliate network, You have also read about how to get started. Your only problem now is to determine how you want to present your content and what kind of content you will use on your site.

There are many different ways to make an affiliate marketing website here are a few:

• Coupon and Rebate Sites - You offer online coupons to visitors along with other deals.


• Online "Mall" sites - Everything under the sun is sold here just like at your local shopping center.


• PPC - Pay per click (you spend money on per click advertising such as Google Adwords.


• Content Rich - You give information here. Basically reference material, tutorials, informative articles, etc.


• Product Review - You review actual products and services and you give details and honest ratings.


• Price Comparison - You show visitors the cheapest products.


• Product Catalogs - List products like a catalog.


• Mixed-Method website - You can mix and match the other methods to find the best one for the products and services that you're promoting.

If you are very knowledgeable about your website's theme then it would be the easiest for you to start with a content rich site. Write about your experiences and make tutorials, Make lists and how to articles. If you are not very familiar with your website's theme then one of the other methods would be the best. If you don't know what you're talking about, people will see right through it. No one needs regurgitated garbage info that you can find on thousands of other websites. Coupon sites are not difficult to set up, but they require constant updating because coupons expire so they'll have to be removed or replaced frequently. Mall sites require good organization and planning or they just become a bloated mess.

I cannot tell you which are the best for making money online with affiliate marketing. It depends a lot on your topic, your affiliate programs, and your knowledge of the topic. Experiment and see what works for you and duplicate that on new websites and change what does not work until it does.

How to get started with affiliate marketing?

I'm sure that many of you are interested in affiliate marketing due to the flexibility it gives. Perhaps you just want to make a few extra dollars or pounds for your next vacation or to save for retirement. That is ok too! You can put as much time and effort into affiliate marketing as you want because you are your own boss.

The problem for many is how to get started and people make some bad decisions, waste thousands of dollars on gimmicks, and then give up. You won't be making thousands of dollars per day unless you spend hundreds on advertising your sites, but you don't have to! I have been doing affiliate marketing since September 2007 and I haven't spend on advertising at all except for a coupon I got for Google Adwords for $25 I got from my web host. Without spending a dollar on advertising, I made almost $400 in December even though I've only been doing this for a couple hours a day for a few months. If I had put in 40 hour weeks I would have made much more.

Here are the basic steps involved:

1. Plan! What kinds of products and services do you want to promote? Pick something that interests you and that you have at least a little knowledge about. If you love to cook, you might want to have a website about gourmet foods and kitchen products. If you like sports, perhaps you'll go for exercise equipment, supplements, and sportswear. In any case pick a topic you enjoy! It will be difficult to motivate yourself to work if it isn't something you like.

2. Brainstorm! Make a mind-map of the topic that you chose and then make an outline and think about how you might organize your website. Also think about the visual aspects of your website so that it will also be attractive. Decide what kind of interactive or social features will benefit visitors. What kind of content will you use?

3. Pick a name! You need to give your website a name so make a list of possible names based on your topic and mind-map and put them in order.

4. Sign up for web hosting! You need a home for your website, so sign up for a cheap shared web hosting account. I recommend signing up with BlueHost or HostGator. In fact, I am currently using Bluehost for all of my current websites.

5. Register your website when you sign up for hosting.

6. Start your site using either HTML pages or a CMS program such as Joomla, WordPress, or Drupal. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Many web hosts have a quick install option for CMS or blogging software. Both BlueHost and HostGator have special quick installs for WordPress and Joomla! called Fantastico.

7. Sign up for affiliate marketing programs for your topic. I recommend starting out with .

8, Start adding content and mix relevant and useful affiliate links in with your content. Don't hard sell! You are providing a benefit for the visitor.

9. Integrate a website statistics service into your website, so you can see what works and what doesn't. I suggest using Google Analytics which is free. Also check your statistics in the affiliate network to see where your sales are coming from and which programs are converting to sales.

10. If a program doesn't convert and you know that your content is good, replace the program with one of another merchant and see if you get better results. When I first started I had used some programs that just wouldn't convert. I tried some others and they did. What do I mean by convert? Your statistics will tell you when a visitor clicks on an affiliate link on your website, If the visitor makes a purchase on the merchants site and the sale registers, it "converted". In other words, the click through converted into a sale.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a kind of marketing done on the internet that depends on an action taking place for compensation to occur.

It is really quite simple.  Merchants need to sell their products, but can't afford to have many sales people since that is a huge up front cost that won't necessarily be compensated for. Additionally sales people are typically paid base salaries and get perks which sometimes include company cars plus retirement plans and health insurance. Needless to say a huge sales force using the traditional approach is a losing proposition.

 What is it basically?

Affiliate marketing pays the sales person who works independently only for the sales and sometimes leads that he or she generates though online promotions.  Typically the Affiliate (independent marketer) is paid by the merchant a commission that is a percent of a base sale. It could also be a fixed amount.

 What are the benefits to affiliate marketing?

The are benefits for both sides.

 What are the benefits for the merchant?

The merchant saves money on benefits and knows for every commission paid, the company made money as well. Meaning all affiliate marketing program expense is covered by revenue.

 What are the benefits for the affiliate?

The affiliate wins because he or she can work anywhere they can find a computer and internet connection (for example your bedroom in your PJs. or even your home office).  This means that the affiliate could even become a world traveler if he had a portable computer and connected at hotels or used cheap internet cafes.

Another great advantage is the work schedule. An affiliate can set his on work schedule. He doesn't have to worry about calling in sick or getting to bed early or getting up early for that long commute. No need to worry about requesting vacation time or family leave time.  An affiliate can work the number of hours per day or week that he or she wants to spend.

Save money on transportation. If you live in a big city, you or someone you live with probably spends an hour or more to get to the office every day spending money on gas and eventually car repairs. With the cost of a car and gasoline going up every year, consider how much money you'd save working at home.

The affiliate also benefits from the knowledge that he won't be fired. Yes, a merchant could remove him from its program, but there are thousands of affiliate marketing programs available so it is just a matter of removing the old and adding new.

Probably the biggest advantage is that there is no limit on how much money an affiliate can earn.

What are the disadvantages of affiliate marketing?

Like anything else in life there are disadvantages.

What are the disadvantages for the merchant?

The disadvantages of the merchant are very few and mostly perceptual. One of them is the cost of maintaining the program. A merchant will need someone working full time to manage the program as a contact person and to handle sales tracking and accounting. If someone isn't available, the merchant could outsource the program by paying a monthly fee to another company to handle the program. The perceived disadvantage is the lack of control. Many managers in today's business are taught to have lots of meetings and to request and read many reports and do metrics to micromanage their salespeople.  Affiliate marketing cuts all that waste out of the equation. No reports are requested directly from the affiliate. The only statistics they'd pull would be from the sales tracking system. Of course, it is really a benefit (micromanagement is a waste of time).

 What are the disadvantages for the affiliate?

First of all, there are no benefits, so the affiliate has to put aside some of his money for health insurance and retirement plans. There is no paid vacation or sick leave either. If you are just getting started with affiliate marketing don't quit your day job until you are making enough money to pay your bills (and Christmas sales don't count).

Secondly, there are expenses. web hosting, domain name registration, taxes, Internet Service Provider bill if you work from home, and of course you need a computer. The up front costs or cost of entry is really quite low. I'll explain in other posts what you'll need to get started.

Working on your own means you need to be self motivated, a self-starter.  If you need a boss to make you work then you're not ready to work at home. Your earnings correspond to the amount of work you put into it.  Don't expect to be making thousands of dollars a month working only an hour or two a day.

Last of all, there is a social cost. Some people will miss the social aspects of working in an office. To them working at home is lonely or depressing. This can be overcome by setting your own schedule. Plan time for work and time for play.

 What are the responsibilities of an affiliate?

An affiliate is only responsible for the promotion of the merchant's products or services. This involves the placement of links that are either graphic or text, and keeping their website or websites up-to-date.  The affiliate should keep contact information current so that payment and tax forms are received without delay.

What are the responsibilities of a merchant?

A merchant handles customer service, shipping of the product, product returns, sales tracking, and payments to affiliates. In other words, the merchant handles everything except the online marketing done by the affiliate.

 Summary

Affiliate marketing is a pay per action system where sales is outsourced to independent contractors who are paid a commission on a per sale basis which results in lower fixed costs for the merchant and great flexibility for the marketer.  Affiliate marketing is not a get-rich-quick scheme, but instead a valid efficient system which gives back in proportion to the work put into it.  Affiliate marketing is NOT  multi-level or Network Marketing whereby someone makes money off of the person lower down on a pyramid. Affiliate marketing involves a direct relationship between the merchant and contractor or the Outsourced Program Manager and the contractor.