My Thoughts On Affiliate Programs

What is an affiliate program? Affiliate programs occur when a seller has a product to advertise and seeks an affiliate to do so with the promise of a percentage of the sale. They form a Joint-Venture if you will. Sometimes the seller even provides a FREE site for the affiliate to advertise his product on. This might seem to be extreme but you can now obtain hosting that gives you unlimited sub-domains. They will also offer to put the site on their host service, (an upgrade) from which they get an affiliate fee and you obtain your own domain name and pay the hosting fees. This also gives the seller a certain amount of protection should you breach any "Terms." For example, should you start spamming for customers as a form of advertising and the domain with all the sub-domains gets shut down.

On the plus side, if you find an affiliate with a "hot" product, you could make up your advertising expenses very quickly.

Your site has to have traffic in order for people to find your ads. There are several ways of doing that:

- One way is paid advertising. Pay-per-click an expensive way of advertising. You pay every time someone clicks through to your landing page. You should have a landing page that is attractive and if you have more then one ad in your campaign, make sure that they land on the page that advertises your affiliate, if more then one.

- Another way is to optimize your pages so search engines can find you with an Organic Search. An SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will enable your meta tags to reflect what your site has to offer to the searchers. You can subscribe to a service like StomperNet but make sure you are going to make more than $1000.00 per month on your campaign. You can invest in a good eBook that teaches you to optimize your site for the most popular search engines and test for performance. There is also an affiliated SEO strategy guide and discussion forum plus monthly newsletter with latest SEO trends & Strategies which I subscribe to at marketingtips.com.
The next step, and this is very important. Make sure your site gets spidered by presenting it to the Search Engines and be careful how often you do it. They are a touchy bunch and don't like to get spammed. They have the trump cards, because if they "black list" you their search engines will NEVER find you.

- Last but not least. This is the way I like to do it! You subscribe to a traffic exchange affiliate for free advertising or cash (paid surfing!) a surfer's paradise. You have to visit a site for 10-60 seconds by clicking on ads. The basic idea is you view other member's websites, and in exchange, different members will view your websites. The way it works is every time you view websites you earn credits and then you exchange these credits for visitors to come to your website. I would recommend joining with 123 Clicks which offers FREE or paid memberships. FREE has limitations but you get to sign up with TrafficSwarm, Traffic Syndicate 25, WebMaster Quest, Top Surfer, Traffic G, and a host of other sites which help promote your site(s) for clicks. An exchange of traffic for search engines to follow the activity.

An affiliate will only pay his customers for successful advertising. In other words your advertising has to be the direct result of the sale. This is a good deal for both parties. The seller gets pre-sale advertising and doesn't pay for it until he sells a product. The affiliate gets paid very well, in some instances, just for having the banner on his site.

Choose your affiliates carefully and you will profit. There are some excellent articles included here. I recommend that you read and learn.

You hear a lot about SCAMS in internet businesses. These are stats put out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

HOW MUCH DO VICTIMS LOSE?
Out of all online fraud reported to the F.B.I.
3% lost over ten thousand dollars;
5% lost $5-10k,
26% lost $1-5k,
43% lost between $100 and $1000,
and 24% lost less than $100 for a 183 million dollars in 2005 - nearly twice the amount for 2004.

WHICH COMMON SCAMS DO THEY FALL VICTIM TO?
Type of Fraud Average Loss % change from 2004
Nigerian Letter $5,000 +67%
Check $3,800 +6%
Confidence $2,025 +103%
Investment $2,000 +220%
NonDelivery $410 +55%
(merchandise & payment)
Auction $285 +93%
Credit/Debit Card $240 none
Look at that -- "Investment" has basically tripled! Okay - so, now I bet you probably have your guess for which country is #1, right???

PERCENT OF NET FRAUD INVESTIGATED BY THE FBI
(by country of origin)
10. Russia - 1.8%
9. Romania - 1.8%
8. Greece - 1.9%
7. South Africa - 2.0%
6. China - 2.0%
5. Italy - 2.8%
4. Canada - 3.6%
3. United Kingdom - 4.9%
2. Nigeria - 9.3%
and the LOSER is ...of course this is where the FBI's jurisdiction lies.
1. United States - 71%

That's more than ALL OTHER COUNTRIES COMBINED.
The scammers are getting trickier, too. For instance, victims of auction fraud lost twice as much per crime than just the year before. So, for the one hundred millionth time: if the deal sounds too good to be true ...

So, this business, Affiliate Programs, that I am trying to educate the newbies with, is not even on the list. I am affiliated with the advertisers on this site except the Google ads that rotate. I thought I was scammed several times by false advertising, but, if it works for some but not by me then the common denominator is ME!...

The most common SCAMS in affiliate programs are "bait and switch." You are offered something for FREE and when you sign up they keep giving you one last chance to upgrade, to pay for the free program.
Non-payment, is when the merchant refuses to recognize the affiliates click-through and withholds payment.

I get scammed more by people seeking Affiliate opportunities that arrive on this or one of my affiliate sites and change my clickbank or affiliate ID to their's so I don't get credit.
I can't understand the underhandedness that requires, but if that's their SCAM, then I hope they get theirs from others doing back to them tenfold.

The only way affiliate programs will ever work is by honesty from all parties. If you see an ad here that interests you then by all means click and check it out. They are my bread and butter and I appreciate everyone that is honest enough to do it the right way. Someone is going to make a profit. If you bypass me and go directly to the seller, then you have given him FREE advertising. I paid for it and if you should happen to affiliate with that merchant you would expect everyone to honor your commitment to the affiliation.

Don't get taken in with ads that say I've been scammed x number of times and ... What? He's not marketing a product? Check it out carefully. Always start off with one affiliation first and see what other programs they have to offer. I was sucked into buying two at once and ended up getting one FREE, except I already paid for it. Could I get re-embursed? Not a chance!
But the worst part is when the affiliate lies about the product in his advertising pitch in order to get a sale. He ceases to be a good advertising medium when he stops promoting the publisher, merchant or seller of the product in order to make his sale.
A good affiliate should aggressively advertise his affiliates product, but not to the detriment of the merchants reputation.
Like any advertising, it is a dog-eat-dog arena and you should choose a product by the advertising done on the merchant's site over any advertising on the affiliates site.
Who do you believe? I think a program is pretty sad when you have to choose your sponsors over the product. It is up to us to clean it up and make this business reputable again.
If and when you get into an affiliate program, remember that you are going to be an advertiser. Are you going to be honest or are you going to push for sales?
Again I reiterate that you will most likely get SCAMMED by an affiliate than by a merchant. That's why there are people making money developing and marketing programs that hide your affiliate ID. Where is the honesty in a gentleman's forum.

The most annoying thing is the forced opt-in's. They ask for your email before you get to buy or affiliate. It is borderline SPAM. To them it's called list building. That's a whole program in itself. You take and keep, never give or sell it, but use it. Why? Because studies show that most people need to visit your site more than once. These studies show an average of five (5) visits.
You send, mostly with the recruitment of an Auto-Responder, email giving them the sales pitch with the urgency required to join at the ground level. The extra bonuses thrown in makes it even more lucrative. If you have a web site and want to offset the costs, then I believe you will find that affiliate programs are the ideal way.
If you are in it for your main source of income, that is also possible if you find the right affiliate and you advertise successfully. Affiliate programs work well for the part-timer also. You never know, you may hit it lucky by affiliating with the right merchant. It's called affiliate marketing because you have to market, advertise your affiliates product. You only make money when he does!
If you're not going to be financially independent by next pay day, then what makes you think that you will be any better off by the following pay day?

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Introduction
by Edward
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About the Author

Edward is the webmaster of this site. See About Me.