How to Choose an Affiliate Program for Maximum Earnings

For my first few months doing business on the internet, every time I would look in the mirror and say “Andy, you are an Internet Marketer”, I felt sorta funny.

I mean, how does a guy and gal like Audrey and I go from selling Replica Swords and Armor to being an Internet Marketer?

By being successful.

You see, the turning point in our home business happened very literally the day we realized the truth:

We are Internet Marketers – whether we like it or not.

Sure, we may think we in the business of selling Medieval Décor, running e-bay auctions, participating in affiliate marketing, and writing How-To Manuals…

But none of the things we THINK we are doing will matter if we don’t learn how to Market our products on the Internet.

And that can be a tough concept to swallow.  After all the time you spend creating a comfortable environment for your shoppers, the hours you spend keeping your books, the effort you put into customer service…you mean you still have to learn to be an Internet Marketer?

No, not unless you want to be successful.  I’m not trying to be glib, and believe me, I think this is a serious subject – that’s why I’m writing about it…

The reason we tell folks to be knowledgeable and passionate about the products they sell is because most of the time, understanding your products is the easiest part of operating a Home Based Business.

The challenging part is understanding how to get your sales message out to folks who might want to give you money for the products you’re selling.  That’s our definition of Internet Marketing.

Maybe you’re asking “Where are you going with this Andy – I thought this was about Diversifying your Business?”.

It is.  Here’s my point.  If you’re going to diversify your Home Based Internet Business, whether you run Yahoo! Stores, e-Bay auctions, promote Affiliate Products or Sell Information on-line – you need to know how to market on the Internet to do any of them successfully.  Keep that in mind as you examine all the ways that you can add Multiple Streams of Income to your bottom line.

How to Choose an Affiliate Program for Maximum Earnings.

The last 3 newsletters have been about using Affiliate Programs to Diversify your Home Based Internet Business.

We’ve talked about the comparative ease of setting up a 3-5 page Mini-Sites that focus on a single product or even one specific model number of a brand.

We’ve talked about Free Search Engines, and how Keyword Relevancy, making your site "Theme Based", and Keyword Density can play a role in achieving high rankings.

We’ve talked about Pre-Selling, and how you can put your visitors in the proper frame of mind as they click through to your affiliate merchant.

And after you spent the time to do all of these things, you still don’t get any sales.

What do you do now?

It’s time to visit your affiliate merchants web site.

When you arrive there, ask yourself; “Would I buy from this place?”.

If the answer is “No.” then it’s time to seriously consider finding another merchant that will actually close the sale.

In a rush to create an affiliate web site, folks have a tendency to stop thinking about what happens to a customer once they leave their affiliate site.  Sure, you can do a fantastic job of  Pre-Selling your visitor, you can tell them all about the ownership experience of the product that you’re recommending, you can list 30 bullets points of benefits…

But if the site that the customer arrives at doesn’t close the sale – your effort is lost.

Before you invest any time setting up your affiliate web site, make sure you visit the web site of the product that you are promoting first.

Most humans know what kinds of hot buttons we need to have pushed in order for us to go reaching for our wallets – draw on that experience as you examine your affiliate merchants site.

Your visitor just spent a few moments at your site, reading all of your Pre-Selling material.  They are now in a particular state of mind that YOU created.

• What will they see next?

• Does it work in conjunction with your Pre-Selling Techniques?

• Does your Pre-Selling recommendation Jive with your affiliate merchants Sales Message?

Does it?

If it doesn’t, then ask yourself why?

Is this particular affiliate merchant clueless about closing a sale?  Is their web site poorly designed?  Do you understand what they are selling with in 5 seconds of arriving?  Do they offer secure on-line ordering?

All of these things can seriously affect your customer’s proclivity for purchasing from your affiliate merchant.  Be critical! Remember, you earned this visitor from a search engine, a pay-per-click, an ezine…  You worked hard to get them to your site!  The last thing you want to do is send them to a place where your effort is wasted.

On the other hand, sometimes, your affiliate merchant’s site will be fine, just different.

Meaning: You created an expectation of the affiliate merchant's product or service on your site that doesn’t quite fit your affiliate merchant’s sales techniques.

You’ve got a couple of choices if this happens:

      1)      Find another affiliate that sells a similar product AND has a web site environment that is more compatible with your affiliate site.

      2)      Change your affiliate site’s text to be more compatible with your affiliate merchant’s site.

Not sure which option to go with?

Well, if you found the affiliate merchant that your using in Commission Junction, there is a FINE solution to your problem.

Each affiliate listen in CJ has a statistic called EPC. 

It stands for Earning Per Click.  For some reason, the actual statistical information refers to the amount of money that the affiliate merchant generates for every 100 clicks that an affiliate send them, not every click.  I suppose they thought that dollar amounts were more impressive and easier to consider than pennies.

Make a note of that affiliate merchant’s EPC, and check out some other affiliate merchants that sell the same products.

Is your affiliate merchant’s EPC competitive?  If it is, then take a second look at your affiliate site and see if there is an easy way to change the nature of your recommendation.

Or you might find another affiliate merchant who’s sales message is much more compatible with your web site, and also earns well. Simply replace your affiliate links with this new affiliate merchant’s.

If the affiliate merchant’s EPC is low, then start looking for another affiliate merchant.

Once you've created the winning combination of a Pre-Selling affiliate environment and an affiliate merchant sales site that closes the sale, your affiliate income will grow and a rapid pace.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at the top 3 resources for affiliate marketing information, in no particular order.

So far, they are:

Phil Wiley – author of Mini-Site Magic. Phil uses 3-5 page Mini-Web Sites to generate a full time income. Read what I had to say about Mini-Site Magic.

Ken Evoy – The undisputed MASTER of Pre-selling techniques, and owner of the marvelous Site-Build It Software.  I wrote an entire review about Ken Evoy’s product’s here.

Michael Campbell – Author of Nothing But Net.  Michael’s a bit of a Hybrid.  On one hand, he’s regarded as an expert at getting high rankings in the free search engines. One the other hand, he made $208,000 his first year as an affiliate marketer.  He has a couple of products, my favorite being “Nothing But Net”.  NBN combines excellent search engine optimization strategies with practical advice about creating an affiliate environment that makes visitors “Open to Buy”. We talked about Michael last week.

And lastly, but not least-ly, there’s James Martel.

James is, well…  A very smart guy.

He is also an affiliate marketer that makes $50,000 a month from promoting affiliate programs.  His product is called “The Affiliate Marketers Handbook”, and it’s the Mercedes of Affiliate Educational Systems.

It’s not for the faint of heart.  Seriously – his system is about the creating of Mega-Sites; Large an elaborate web sites that use search engine friendly content and strategically structured internal hyperlinks to create very high search engine rankings.

Even Phil Wiley promotes James Martel’s Affiliate Handbook!  That’s how incredible the information is!

But, it comes at a price. So, it’s not for the faint of heart, or the “Tire Kicker” affiliate wanna-be’s.  I wrote an entire article about James’ product.  You can read about it here.

Til Next Time!