How to Choose Good Affiliate Program
Sunday, 16 September 2007

Affiliate Marketing has developed into an Internet marketing specialty. Not everyone can do it effectively. It's not real hard, but it is tedious work and requires some attention to detail. The best affiliate marketing programs all have certain characteristics that make them successful. Here are a few of the most important characteristics of an affiliate marketing program:

Pays monthly - This is a big one. If you don't pay often enough you'll lose affiliates and you can't grow without affiliates.

Pays generously - This is perhaps the most important determinant of whether an affiliate marketing program will succeed. Pay your affiliates well and they will stick with you. Don't, and they will leave.

Two-tiered structure - Two-tiered affiliate programs are under rated, but the best affiliate marketing programs pay people for recruiting other affiliates. The second tier doesn't have to be much. It can be about 10% or even 5% of the affiliate commission (which I highly recommend be about 50% for most products), but at 5% of the affiliate commission your affiliates will recruit others to join their sales team and you will succeed all the more.

Provides support materials - Banners, sales pages, other resources. Whatever will help your affiliates be better affiliates, that's what you need to do. Support them and they'll support you.

Communicates with affiliates on a regular basis - Really. Don't leave your sales team hanging. Either write a blog just for your affiliates, start an e-zine just for them, or both. But you have to communicate with them on a regular basis so that they don't feel abandoned.

Offers specials - Every now and then you need to run a special, or a contest. This is motivational. It gets people excited and motivated, excited affiliates work harder to sell your products.

If you want your affiliates to be successful, you've got to give them the tools to do so. Otherwise, they will abandon you like a sinking ship and you'll be left selling your own cold, stale products.
About the Author

Nick Stamoulis and Brick Marketing provide companies with Internet Marketing Services . He writes daily in his blog the Search Engine Optimization Journal

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posted by Nawaki's @ 09:59, ,


How to Combine Affiliate Marketing with Other Home Businesses
Monday, 3 September 2007

Home business owners have a lot of options for what they want to do. They can run fairly traditional businesses out of their homes, such as network marketing, daycare or bookkeeping, or they can use their skills in the newer businesses the Internet has made available, such as website design, virtual assistants and affiliate marketers.

However, you can combine affiliate marketing with many of these opportunities. It's a way you can offer the most complete options to the customers you come into contact with.

A website designer, for example, may offer hosting or can simply recommend hosting through various companies, and be paid for referring the customers. A network marketer can offer products and services that are related to what he or she is selling, but aren't available through the network marketing company.

All you have to do is think about what more you can offer your existing client base. There are probably plenty of items that are related to the things they trust you on anyhow that you could recommend and earn money through the affiliate program.

You never want to overdo this. Pushing too many products to loyal customers is a good way to scare a number of them off, and possibly irritate the rest. Your recommendations need to be genuine and useful.

Affiliate programs are quite widespread. Take a look at sites you shop at regularly, and you may see a link to the affiliate or associate on many of them. Others may have them, but the link will not be so obvious.

Consider whether your clients would be most interested in information or in physical products. Information can be a hot seller, although you do need to be certain that what you recommend is indeed high quality and well written.

Perhaps the best part is that you may or may not need a website to be an affiliate. Having a website makes some things easier, but there's nothing keeping you from making recommendations in person if that's how your business is run.

Adding another stream of income is always a good thing for a business when you do it right. It can even improve your reputation as a person who really knows what his or customers need. You just have to keep your eyes open for opportunity and make the most of it. Discovering new things to offer your clients can be a lot of fun and potentially profitable.
About the Author

Stephanie Foster runs http://www.aspectsofhomebusiness.com/ to help people wanting to run a home business. She offers more tips on affiliate marketing at her site.

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posted by Nawaki's @ 00:41, ,