Are you planning to join an affiliate program? Then you need to
ask few crucial questions to the affiliate program Before you
join. This will save guard your interest as an affiliate
marketer and make sure the program is suitable for you.
There are many
people who like to joint affiliate programs widely available in
the internet. However, there are few crucial questions that as
an affiliate, you need to ask to affiliate programs. These
questions will help you determine whether a program is reliable
and will work for you in long run. These questions will clarify further the nature of the affiliate
program and you would know whether any particular programs suit
you or not.
-
One of the
most important questions to ask to any affiliate program is,
will it cost you anything to join the program? Most of the
affiliate programs offered today are free. My suggestion is not
to joint any programs that charges you and joining fee since I
believe it is a rip off. Try to find the one that does not
charge you and you are free to join or exit the program anytime.
-
Another
question you need to find out is when do they pay your
commission checks? Each program is different, and some will
pay once a month, twice a month and etc. Most affiliate will
require minimum commission amount before they are willing to
issue a check out. There are also some affiliate programs
that will pay only when the commission amount hits a certain
predetermined amount that you have set earlier when you
joint the program.
-
How are referrals from an
affiliate's site tracked by the affiliate program and how long do they remain
in the system? Make sure you're confident as to the quality
of your particular affiliate program before you refer people from your
site. This is also the only way you can obtain credit for a
sale. In addition, the period of time that these people
visit records stay
in the system is also important. This is important, because
some visitors will not initially buy anything, but they
might want to return later to make a purchase after they
have compared with other options. You need to
know if you will still get credit for the sale if it is done
at some point later, after the prospective customer's first
visit. Normal tracking/record tracking period should at
least last 7 days.
-
Ask also what is the hit
per sale ratio for a particular banner or affiliate link? A hit per sale ratio is the average number
of hits to a particular banner or text link that it takes to
generate a sale based on affiliate statistics. This
particular element is very important, because it tells you
how much traffic you have to generate to the affiliate link
before you can earn a commission from a sale. It also tells
you to certain extent how good or convincing is the sales
landing page (prepared by the affiliate program) that a customer you referred will be
reading once they clicks on your link or banner.
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What kind of affiliate statistics
do the program you are
considering will be providing - if any? The statistics should be available online
anytime you want to check them out. You need to consistently
check your individual stats in order to know how many
impressions, hits and sales have been generated from your
site. "Impressions" means the number of times a banner or
text link was reviewed by a visitor of your site. A "hit"
denotes the particular customer clicking on the banner or
text link in question.
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Who are the online retailer?
Who
are you doing business with? Is it really a solid company?
You need to do some Google search about any particular
affiliate program name and see if anyone have reported
anything bad about the program. Find out as much as you can
about the retailer you are considering. The more you know about the
retailer, the easier it will be for you to know if the
affiliate program they offer is really for you and your
site. You also do not want he affiliate program to cheat
you, right?
-
Is the affiliate program a one-tier or two-tier program?
A two-tier program if available will be good as it
pays you a commission on sales generated by any affiliate
you sponsored in your program in addition to that generated
from your own sales. Some two-tier programs even pay small
fees on each new affiliate you sponsor, something like a
recruitment fee but not many programs offers this package.
You should check this too since you could be leveraging on
other people's time and effort.
These are some
of the questions that you could post to any affiliate programs
that you intent to joint. If any of their answers seems to be
not convincing, you should consider other programs since there
are thousand of them in the internet.
Rahman Alwi is
the author of a website called
http://www.toliveonline.com . The
website teaches readers different online business models, how to
create your website, performing your own search engine
optimization and build your website traffics. These information
are crucial for every webmasters who wants to be an internet
entrepreneur. The website is unique and shows how to start each
online business models from creating the idea to actually having
a workable website. FREE ONLINE BUSINESS INFORMATION FOR YOU !!
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