Affiliate Programs - What You Need To Know |
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If you browsed the internet looking for affiliate programs, you will soon find that there are literally thousands upon thousands of them. There are more affiliate programs than you can imagine. Because there are so many different affiliate programs it brings certain questions to mind. Here are some questions that might arise about affiliate programs... Why so many? Are they all good? Can you really make money with any of them? Which ones are the best? Which ones are the worst? How can you tell if an affiliate program is any good? How can you tell if an affiliate program is a scam? The number of questions that can be asked about affiliate programs are endless. And the answers can sometimes be more confusing than the questions themselves. Well, hopefully in this quick guide to affiliate programs, you will find all the answers that you need, or at least most of them. So, what is an affiliate program? Basically an affiliate program is an arrangement between you and a business in which they pay you a percentage of every sale made through your special affiliate link. In even simpler terms, you promote someone else's product and they pay you for it. The program may take the form of an actual product. For example, you can become a member of Shareasale.com and promote any their many different merchant products. That is an affiliate program where you don't necessarily promote the program but what they sell. And then there are affiliate programs like Success University where you promote the program itself. Is one better than the other? Well, I will try to answer that question a little later on. Some affiliate programs, like shareasale.com, are free to join. In their case you simply sign up as an affiliate. You then look through their network of merchant products and promote the ones that work best for you with whatever marketing methods you decide to use. Other affiliate programs are free to join but you don't make money with them unless you upgrade to paid membership. The reason for this is because you are only paid for other people you bring in if you are a paid member yourself. Success University is an example of this kind of program. These are usually residual income programs and are my personal favorite. Affiliate programs have many ways in which you can get paid. Some, like Sharesale.com pay you a flat commission for each product you sell. Since many of these programs have more than one product and they usually all sell for different prices, how much you actually make per sale depends on the product you sell. Other programs pay you a set commission for each member you bring in. Others pay a variable commission based on what level you are in the membership chain. Other programs may even pay you for the efforts of those that you brought in yourself. One thing you have to be careful about with affiliate programs is that many of them have minimums before you can get paid. For example, with Shareasale.com you have to earn $50 in commissions before they will send you a check. Many of their products pay less than $50 in affiliate commissions per sale, so you have to make multiple sales before you will be paid. So far we have barely scratched the surface of affiliate programs. We'll go into more detail in part two of the affiliate program guide... Home Page |