How to pick a good Affiliate Program

Because I personally do not want to carry stock and run to the post office every time there’s an order, I choose affiliate programs where the company handles all the orders, shipping and returns.

Choosing an affiliate program to market can be rather daunting. Below I list out some of the things I look out for before settling on a particular program. I hope they will help you too.
 

1. Good Products at Good Prices
   You want to be able to share products that are beneficial to others but at the same time are good value for money. Ideally, your product should be in demand and should meet a need. Also, the product should not be easily available anywhere else, otherwise they might just shop elsewhere.
    
2. Good Commission Rates
   You don’t want a situation where the commission rates are so low that you either have to make thousands of sales to see any income or where you end up making a loss after you you’ve spent money on your marketing efforts.
    
3. Good Reviews
   These reviews should not only be from their customers or end-user but preferably also from other affiliate marketers. Although I must affiliate reviews are not always available.
    
4. Good Marketing Material
   If this is not available, you will find yourself postponing your marketing efforts because you would be spending too much time, money and effort creating banners, flyers and other marketing collateral.
   
   (Please read the important on Phone Orders note I’ve included at the end of this post)
    
5. Good and Informational Website
   You want a program where you get an affiliate link that you can share and let the company website do the selling. If they can take care of that, you can focus on advertising and promotions.
   
   Visitors to the site should be able to get all the critical information they need and they should be able to make the purchase directly from there. If they have questions, they should be able to contact the company directly without you losing the sale in the process.
   
   This brings us to companies that allow telephone orders. Accepting phone orders are great because not everyone is comfortable placing orders via websites yet.
   
   If the company you select allows telephone orders, you need to talk to them and find out how they accommodate this without you, the affiliate, losing the sale.

I know of companies that place the Affiliate’s ID on the header or footer of their website, so when a person lands on your site due to your promotion efforts, and then call the company to get more info or place an order, the company representative would ask the customer to read out the Affiliate ID on the site. This way you still get paid.
 

IMPORTANT NOTE

Although a company gives you an affiliate website to direct your visitors to, you need to have your own primary website or capture page where you can build a database of people who have shown interest for those products.

If you do not do this, you will never be able to establish a brand for yourself and create repeat customers because you don’t have their details.

Markethive has a whole lead capture system for Entrepreneurs, that will allow you to do this. And the best part?Iit’s Free! Markethive allows you to create unlimited campaigns, capture pages, lead groups and more. What this means is that you sign up for a free account and use it for all your different businesses, whether affiliate marketing, offline business, network marketing, etc.

You can create databases with full information of all those interested in what you have to offer and you can send our email broadcasts anytime there’s a new promotion, new product, etc. This is pretty amazing considering there are other companies that are selling these systems for $2500 per month.

I highly recommend you immediately get a membership with Markethive and then take your time figuring out which affiliate program you’re going to promote.
 

Here’s to your success!

Melody Christie

Where life takes me..

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