How to Find Affiliate Schemes for Websites
Tips on Finding Internet Affiliate Marketing Programs
Thousands of online publishers use affiliate programs as an important revenue stream. Simply recommend a good product or service offered by a particular company by linking to the product using a graphic and/or text link; when the customer makes a purchase, the publisher earns a commission based on a percentage of the product’s value.
The principal is easy but how do publishers find suitable affiliate programs?
Finding Online Affiliate Schemes
The best place to start is to look for well respected brands that provide good customer service. Amazon, for example, is a popular affiliate merchant as it offers a vast range of products from books and DVD’s to home and beauty products. Affiliate links are easy to set up and advanced options are available for publishers to create their own online stores.
Make a shortlist of good brands most relevant to the website’s content then look to see whether they offer an affiliate scheme. Those that do will have an “affiliate” link usually on the bottom of the page. Simply click on the link and follow the instructions to partner with that merchant.
Some merchants prefer not to advertise affiliate programs on their websites but a quick search on Google will reveal their affiliate marketing hosting company. Simply key in affiliate site: followed by the domain name minus the www. prefix.
Affiliate Hosting Companies
Most merchants use affiliate marketing companies to manage their affiliate schemes. Popular companies are Commission Junction, LinkShare, Tradedoubler and ShareASale. Whilst this may seem like the easy way to find a suitable scheme, in practice it can be tedious as it takes hours of searching through the hundreds of merchants on offer.
A clever way to save time is to look at competitor websites, find a merchant with an affiliate link and check the link URL to find out the name of the affiliate hosting company. Some links are encrypted which hides the name of the affiliate host so a little more detective work may be required.
Before signing up with a hosting company, it’s worth checking whether the chosen merchants work with more than one affiliate host. It’s far better to work with multiple merchants under one hosting umbrella as there are minimum payment thresholds, usually $100, plus some companies like Commission Junction will actually deduct earnings from accounts which have not earned any commission for six months.
What do the Best Affiliate Schemes Offer?
- 60 day cookies as a minimum, ideally 90 days or more- this allows commission to be earned even if a customer takes time to make a buying decision.
- Commission rates that offer value. 3% on a $5000 holiday may be fine but 3% on a $10 book will need a lot of sales to make any real money.
- A variety of affiliate linking methods including text links, banner ads and deep links where publishers can link to actual product pages, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
- Availability of smart links and data feeds which allow real time offers to appear on a website; these are especially useful for travel websites.
Practical Tips for Using Affiliate Programs
- Before signing up, check how easy it is to set up links as some hosting companies make it seem like a real chore.
- Beware of affiliate merchants who only offer banner links; this is just a means of free advertising as banner ads used alone do not generate many click-throughs.
- If looking to offer multiple product links, look for easy implementation methods such as Amazon’s aStore as setting up individual product links is time consuming.
Find the Best Affiliate Program
Take time to shortlist the right merchants that fit with your website content, find out who runs their affiliate scheme then sign up with the smallest number of affiliate hosting companies to simplify implementation and tracking.
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You may also be interested in Tips to Earn more Money from Affiliate Programs and Pay per Click Affiliate Programs.
Find the Best Affiliate Schemes
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