9 Factors to Consider When Choosing an Affiliate Program

Online Marketing Experts advise that no one should just jump into the business without deep reflections and planning. These days, starting an affiliate marketing program can be a bit tricky because of the proliferation of scam businesses everywhere. There a literally thousands of affiliate programs from merchants and online stores out there promising to pay commissions for all sales you can generate. Many of these schemes could be scams, while many others are genuine. The real reason you must do all due diligence before you get involved in any. Here are some 9 factors you must consider before deciding.


 
01. Reputation of the Affiliate Program
 
When picking an affiliate program to join, you must start with merchants who have a good reputation. This makes your job easier as all you have to do is to simply point your ads leads to them. Company good reputation is all embracing. It includes past sales records, tracking methods, reliability, good payments/commissions methods as well as good news and reviews about the company. A thorough internet search for news and information about the merchants can always help out here.

02. Can I Sell the Product/Service?

This is rather obvious. You can only make money on a product you are capable of selling. You will only be paid if you can successfully sell a product/service. If not, you will merely be laboring in vain. To sell a product/service, you have to be sufficiently convincing. If you are not well vast and knowledgeable about a product/service, you will find it difficult convincing others to buy. When choosing an affiliate marketing program therefore, you must consider choosing those that sell the kind of products and services that you can promote successfully on and offline.

03. Does the Program support my Country?
 
When choosing an affiliate program, you must choose the ones that support your country because that is where your earnings will be sent. Without country support, you may end up promoting and selling products/services for merchants without receiving payments as due for all your troubles. You can’t claim to be in business if you are unable to earn from it.

04. What are the payment options?

This is always a major concern because everyone wants to earn commissions as due. For that reason, if the payment options supported by your affiliate marketing program are not supported in your country, you will not be able to receive your payments. A real dilemma no doubt! So, before selling for an affiliate, make sure you will be able to receive your commissions seamlessly. Luckily for most marketers, web technologies support many payment options these days. You have credible payment options like Bank Cheques, Wire Transfers, PayPal, Payoneer Master Card, and Direct Deposits. Find out what works in your country before getting involved.

05. What is the Cookie Timeout?

This is one important but very interesting technicality in affiliate marketing. Cookies! Cookie timeouts!! Cookies help to identify correctly where a sale was initiated online. Cookie timeout determines how long from the time you first pointed a lead to an affiliate merchant’s website that a purchase from them will earn you a commission. Cookie timeouts vary from 24 hours, one week, two weeks, 30 days, or up to 90 days or even more depending on the product/service and the merchants.


 
06. Commission Structure in place

Since every marketer wants to earn commissions, some attention must be paid to the commission structure involved in the business. You must find out what percentage of commission you are entitled to when you help point buyers to the merchants and when a sale is made. Google adsense web technologies are very popular in determining commission volumes and payouts online. This you can research easily through Google. From the merchants, you can find out if the commissions they pay are one-time commissions, recurring commissions, or residual commissions.

07. Promotion Methods Allowed

You’ve got to find out the different methods the affiliate program allows you to promote their products/services. It is very smart to make sure that your preferred methods of promotion are permitted by the affiliate program. Some may prohibit advertising on Search Engines like Google while others may kick against using social media. Conversely, some social media platforms prohibit the promotion of certain products/services on their platforms. You must take all these into account before settling for an affiliate program because without being able to promote a product/service successfully, you can’t expect to help sell it.

08. Are there Sales Support Services?

Selling could be very problematic for marketers if sales support services are not available. Brochures, banners, text links, manuals and even sales training help provide the much needed marketing promotions support to the buyers through the sales force. Merchants providing these things and even having in place prompt response and feedback time somehow help to oil the entire selling process. Sales support services are credible ways an affiliate program can help you succeed faster and better since your success directly impacts on their own success.

09. Timely Payments

It helps to always confirm the payment procedure of an affiliate program before joining. This you can do by asking the right questions such as:
How often can you receive Payment (Weekly, Monthly or Quarterly)?
What is the minimum balance payment threshold you must accumulate before you are paid?
What is the Payment Cycle? 
With what currency will you be paid?
Any withholding deductions for tax purposes or charities?


 

Popular Variants of Affiliate Marketing

The question is often asked by newbie marketers, how many variants of affiliate marketing are there? That question always leads many people to wondering whether there is more than one type of affiliate marketing. Indeed there is even though most established marketers argue otherwise claiming there isn’t really any distinction. For newbies in the business, it helps just to establish a little distinction hoping the information can help them to know where they are and what approach they need to succeed faster. For their benefit, let us limit our discussion to just two types of affiliate marketing.

Product Centric Affiliate Marketing and Content Centric Affiliate Marketing


 
What exactly do these mean?

1. Product Centric Affiliate Marketing

In real practice, most affiliate marketing efforts are traditionally built around a product/service. All that is required is to simply identify a product/service you like then use different marketing channels to promote it. One of these channels is to build a website around the product or niche the product belongs to then promote it like mad. Alternatively or in addition, you can build social media pages or groups around this product/service, buy ads on Facebook and Google, create email marketing, and sales funnel all to drive sale to this product/service to enable you earn handsome commissions. To maximize earnings, you could be doing this for multiple products and services simultaneously.

Also you could build dozens of small niche websites each targeted at the product/service you are selling. Even if you don’t have a website of your own, you can just buy ads from Social Networks, Search Engines, and other traffic sources to drive traffic to your affiliate products and services. The main business of a product centric affiliate marketer therefore is to build a business around simply selling a product/service through concerted promotional efforts.

2. Content Centric Affiliate Marketing

This is the second variant with some slight difference. As a Content Centric Affiliate Marketer, all you do is to build an audience by creating regular content online then use affiliate marketing as one of the ways to monetize your content creation. This is what most bloggers to online to earn a living. Your passion here is to share your content and build your brand.  Affiliate marketing is just one way you can make money from that passion. Assuming you write a very popular blog online with a high traffic of visitors. All you need do is to display banners and text ads around your blog posts to catch the attention of visitors to your blog. When these visitors click on these ads and or buy products through your links, you earn a commission. Good business no doubt but you must have an informative, educative and entertaining content to share regularly to keep the visitors coming. The advent of popular social media sites like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook which make it relatively easy to share content and photos has helped to revolutionize content centric affiliate marketing around the world.

It must be noted that nothing in the business restricts anyone to any of these two methods absolutely. In fact, it pays better to combine both if you can. A combination of both however requires some experience. As you go deeper and become more experienced in affiliate marketing, you will at some point find it very profitable incorporating the two approaches in your marketing strategy.