Researching Affiliate Programs (Affiliate Networks) – Beginners’ Tips
Researching Affiliate Programs
When researching affiliate programs, it is important to consider several factors:
1. Is the affiliate program pay-per-lead or pay-per-sale?
2. What is the dollar amount or percentage of the payouts?
3. How often are commissions sent out?
4. Are the commissions released through paypal, direct deposit, check or other methods?
5. How long are tracking cookies in place for? (For example, if someone clicks through your unique affiliate link and then decides to wait six weeks before purchasing, will you still get paid for that sale)?
When business owners decide to create an affiliate program for their product or service, they can choose to do so through variant means. Software programs can be purchased online; uploaded and installed so that the company has their own affiliate program setup. Their company would personally manage their affiliate program and they would be responsible for sending out checks or payments to the affiliates promoting for them. That type of affiliate program could be classified as an Independent affiliate program.
For business owners who do not want to deal with the tracking, payments and workload involved with having an Independent affiliate program, they may choose to signup with an Affiliate Network. Affiliate Networks do the work for the businesses and manage an array of affiliate programs in one place. For people who work online and promote many different products, it can be difficult to keep track of all of them. If you sign up with only Independent affiliate programs you may be receiving checks all at different times, you must keep track of each one in order to manage all the statistics (which is important to do in order to pay taxes).
Affiliate Networks differ because once you sign up to be a part of the Affiliate Network, then you may browse different affiliate programs based on criteria such as: Health and Fitness, Home and Family, Internet, Money and Employment, etc. You can also usually search for an affiliate program based on a keyword or search term/phrase. With an Affiliate Network, all of your earnings are managed through your account control panel and payments are consolidated so that you receive your check or direct deposit with all profits at once (rather than multiple checks from different companies).
Helpful Affiliate Marketing Sites for Beginners
- Here are three websites which are really helpful for newcomers to affiliate marketing:
- AffiliateManager.net – This website’s goal is to assist those who are just getting started with affiliate programs as well as affiliate marketing gurus.
- AffiliateTip.com – This website offers free resources to help affiliates with programs while providing “How-To”s on affiliate promotion and help with which affiliate programs to promote.
- AffiliateBoards.com – This is a forum dedicated to affiliate marketing. [currently this site is no longer an active forum.]
Learn more on Affiliate Marketing: Honest Riches by Holly Mann – 3rd edition (10-in-1 Special Edition)
Honest Riches 2nd Edition: Beginner’s Quick Guide to Online Home Business
