A Guide to making money off Affiliate Programs on the net.

A Guide to making money off Affiliate Programs on the net.

This write up is an update to the last published article on the subject. This includes experiences with reference to the 'post dot-com' days on the net. As a dedicated webmaster, it has been obvious to me that the NASDAQ, affiliate program earnings potential and real earnings are directly proportional.

With a lesser amount of money available for dotcoms to spend, and also due to the fact that there are lesser numbers of those companies currently in existence - there are fewer affiliate programs that offer real opportunities to earn money. Those that are still in existence have dropped payout rates several fold. So for the same number of clicks or impression that you generate for their banner ads. there is a lesser payout.

An analogy to this may be drawn to 'market correction' which is a term frequently used by financial analysts and 'stock' types. The rates offered now may be the realistic rates. Rates which allow the advertiser to make a return on his/her investment.

What this translates to is that, a webmaster into marketing affiliate programs must re-think certain things.

1. Is the time spent on doing this really worthwhile ?

This could be a 'yes' or a 'no' depending on which country you belong to, since most affiliate programs are US currency based.

This would also depend on how much your free time is worth to you and how much of importance you place on income generated from the web as compared to your daily means of earning a livelihood. This however does not mean that you cannot earn a regular income of the web - it just means that you should think about how much time you are planning to spend on this.

2. If the rates for 'pay per click' programs have fallen, then are they still a good bet ? Most 'pay per sale' programs still have the same payouts.

3. What would be a profitable strategy to make a decent income from the web ?

You will be able to address these questions and more after reading the information below:

1) Deciding on a Site:

The key to making money on affiliate programs is "traffic". The more visitors that come to your site the more money you'll make. So decide on a concept that has a wide appeal. Examples: celebrities, bikinis, sports stars, body building, fitness models etc etc. Working on a site that has wide appeal also has the advantage of being able to get content and also create content easily.

If you have an area of interest that you don't mind spending a lot of time with and learning more about, it's a good place to start. For example if you're an avid gardener - maybe you'd like to start a site that deals with information about gardening, seeds, horticulture...

If you're going to spend time on something it may well be something you enjoy writing, reading and talking about.

2) Create a useful site:

A site (apart from entertainment related ideas) should be informative with content that is useful and able to provide value to the viewer. The user should want to come back again and again. Needless to say, your content should make the viewer respect your site. Sites can be incredibly simple but useful, as long as the content is neatly arranged and there is real content. The more interesting you make your site, the more people are going to end up spending time on it.

The importance of earning the respect of your visitor cannot be emphasized enough. If you sound knowledgeable, serious and committed towards providing a quality experience for the visitor - it shows. This translates into trust which translates into relevant products getting sold on your website.

There is nothing more important than a good recommendation in making a person go for a product and make a purchase.

Let's take a little (fictional) case study:

Consider a site built for digital photo enthusiasts. As you know these days there is a lot of publicity given to digital photography. Almost every electronics magazine has something about digital cameras and related equipment. And it's true that digital cameras are quite cheap and affordable as compared to a year back. Due to the fact that digital photography is still in its infancy, I think that every year we're going to see cheaper cameras with better optical resolutions and more cheaper digital storage mechanisms for digital cameras. It's obvious that this is going to be on an upswing.

Now let's say Joe buys a garden variety 3.3 megapixel camera. Since he's spent money on the thing, he takes a few shots. Since it's free to shoot pics, he shoots lots of them. Some turn out to be really good. Now Joe would obviously like to see what other people are getting out of their digital cameras and also other people's opinions on his works of art. So he searches the net and posts his pics on a site that does exactly this.

The site would offer the following features:

1. Information on new models, a review and some samples of pictures taken with the cameras. General information on digital photography and certain lessons on taking good pictures.

2. The ability to post user photos and the ability for other users of the site to comment on them.

3. A discussion area where people can just exchange thoughts on accessories, filters etc.

4. The ability for people to get in touch with professional photographers in their area.

5. The ability to identify and purchase a camera or accessories for the new visitor.

6. The ability to swap, sell equipment.

7. Value added services such as information on discounts, sales or coupons or promotional codes from large online vendors.

8. Any other information or services useful to a photo enthusiast.

What does this site achieve for the webmaster ?

1. Content comes free.

2. Traffic grows exponentially provided the webmaster is able to get a certain number of viewers initially.

3. A good place to sell cameras (which range from $299-$3500) and make a decent commission.

4. A good place to cross-sell other products which would be of interest to a person who likes electronics.

5. Provided the traffic is good - a regular income from a 'pay per impression' program.

6. Income from a 'pay per click' program that offers a service that a substantial people are likely to click and atleast take a look at.

In essence the traffic for this type of site opens up atleast 3-4 revenue streams. Most of whom would come back again. This also has a downside. A webmaster has to change banners frequently as people are not going to click on the same banner twice. But, this get's taken care of by automated banner swapping services that most internet advertising companies employ. But, product banners need to be quite fresh all the time.

Here are certain tips on designing an effective site.

You need not have any design experience but keep the following in mind.

a) Keep the site simple

b) Design the site in such a way that the user has to see the maximum number of pages to get at what he/she want too look at without getting bored.

c) Do not overload the site with non-essential stuff like FLASH modules, Java Applets etc etc that slow the site down - unless it's absolutely essential. Try to keep the site fast and conserve bandwidth for the affiliate banners. In case you expect your visitors to come back on a regular basis, use Flash and Java applets wherever necessary for effect as these get cached by most browsers and will load up instantly.

Compress Images - Use only JPG images for large photographs. You'll be surprised that even after 40% compression many images suffer very little in terms of visible resolution and the size reduction is AMAZING. GIFs are great from certain images that can do with 256 colors and don't require photo-realism.

Compression not only is good for downloading speeds but also for using the space that you bought more effectively. Host twice the number of pages !

d) Lots of Content - Put in enough information so that the visitor cannot see it within one visit. Imply that you're going to update every week - Atleast update every 2-3 weeks.

e) If there are gonna be lots of photographs - provide thumbnails. There are lots of software for doing this like Thumbsplus, Thumbnailer, Arles - web page creator etc.

f) Layout the site well - Use some aesthetic sense so that the site has visual appeal. Just look at a few other sites on the same lines for ideas if you're running short.

g) Keep the site content original - I am not going to get into Copyrights and that kind of stuff but do a lot of scanning and content creation on your own. Many of the sites basically have the same recycled old material and it shows. A little bit is OK. But lots of it is plain obvious and is not going to earn your site any admirers or regular visitors or referrals.

h) Do not put in truckloads of banners everywhere. Concentrate on only two or three products per site. Cross "Vertical Products" would be ideal.(Products which are entirely different in nature)

3) Generate Traffic:

The majority of your traffic is not going to be from Search Engines. Maybe 10% will be. But you'll depend on referrals from other sites who work on the same lines and use the same concept.

a) Spend atleast a week browsing all these sites and place a link to those you want to exchange links. They'll usually have a "webmasters" page that indicates the terms. Mostly it's just a text link. Place Banner links to only those sites which are really massive and are going to generate a lot of traffic for you. A quick way to get linked up is to look at a good site and look at all the links that they have put up. Visit all those sites and get started.

Give credit to sites that send you a large amount of traffic.
Place the top referrers onto a "top referrers" page.

To track referrers use a service like: http://www.thecounter.com, http://www.sitemeter.com which'll give you a tracking service when you sign up with them and embed their code onto your page.

b) Submit certain gallery pages to other sites of the same nature. This is possible if you have personal communication with other webmasters who would like to showcase other sites on a certain area on their site on a reciprocal basis.

The net is a competitive place. Every webmaster is usually open to suggestions for increasing his/her traffic and also to get a fresh set of 'eyeballs' to look over his/her stuff. Don't be afraid to send traffic over to other sites - if you have confidence in your site's quality being good. The average websurfer would have found the other sites anyway. You might as well get some traffic in return and also the goodwill.

c) Search Engines are not to be neglected.

Submit to all the major ones atleast. On the 'keywords' meta tag: use phrases that will be used. Use phrases in your site that describes your site or the products you are marketing. More importantly - the products you are marketing. Because the visitor will be a potential buyer with a lot better chances of buying something rather than a person looking for pics.

Look at the first site that turn up on a search and study the page carefully. Experiment with meta tags on the page, text on the page etc etc.

You'll get the winning combination pretty fast.

Submit to speciality search engines that are country or topic specific.

Submit every 2 months.

If you have a friend who is Japanese or speaks Japanese - get a Japanese translation done and submit to all the Japanese search engines. Japan is the world's second largest Internet Market - next to the US.

German would be the next alternative.

Newsgroups and discussion board submissions are also great places to get traffic. One place to start off is a competing site with a discussion board. Post your URL there.

There were days when most engines used to accept submissions for free and used to list you for free. This is no longer the case. Most engines like Yahoo, Google, Altavista have a paid option and also a free service. But paid listings get the higher rankings on the results page. This is not so bad. The overall quality of results available from search engines has generally become better. So it's not a bad idea to shell out a few bucks atleast for Yahoo and Altavista during the initial days of the site.

Once you have had a couple thousand people visit the site - word will get around.

d) Get written about.

You would not believe how easy it's to get written about. Most magazines have a little 'net' section which reviews useful websites or just plain wacky stuff. If you have something that fits the bill - don't hestitate to write in to a magazine and send in a brief request to the editor along with a description and a page printout of your site. If it get's written about somewhere you will get the traffic and also have something to boast about on your website.

3) Maintenance:

Do not make 10 lousy sites. Make one good one and market it well. Site promotion takes time so work on one making one good site.

4) Site Name:

Choose a catchy but effective name that best describes your site. Do not try to cut corners on Domain Registration costs. $15 buckaroos saved can translate to $100's lost. You have to build a BRAND name for your site that many people bookmark. And most will not do it for a site on geocities.com or any other free page.

Hosting is really cheap - on some places like http://www.webjump.com or http://www.web1000.com, it's free. But it makes sense to go for a paid service (unless you have illegal content) because, you get better performance, you have access to the 'cgi-bin' directory which you need to run scripts and you have flexible storage space. You can always get more. The biggest advantage is that you save screen 'real-estate' by avoiding the banners that are common on free web-space providers

5) Use a reliable fast - hosting provider. By looking at the hosting provider's site you can estimate the company size and basically whether they "look" to be reliable. If you are not sure - just send an email to a web master who runs a similar kind of site and ask for advice. - Most are pretty helpful. DO NOT go for ultra big hosting names that charge you $20 per month for 5 MB. And forget about "setup" charges. Most importantly - get a good amount of bandwidth. Bandwidth is what runs up the bills for the webhosting provider and that's what they charge you for. Harddisk space is cheap and comparatively unimportant. If you have a lot of pictures on your site - you'll need the bandwidth. Find a provider that gives you a base allocation like 10 gigs per month and charges incrementally above that. Remember - there is no such thing as 'unlimited bandwidth', it's just a marketing gimmick. I know because I've been kicked off several webhosts.

Setting up an account takes little time. If you are paying upfront for 3 months - there should be no set up fee. Feel frank enough to tell the support staff this. Just say you cannot pay !

The one important factor is "UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH". Be sure to get this as Free sites with lots of pics run up massive bandwidth charges.

IF you use MS Frontpage - get a server host that supports Frontpage extensions. I don't like using MS Frontpage and pretty much cannot comment on it except that it's good for a novice but not too exciting for a power user.

Providers with really low rates often use a single T1 line and give you an over-burdened webserver. Avoid them. If their website takes time to load, yours will take longer. If your Hosting provider gives you a UNIQUE IP Address, all the more better. People who like to type in numbers instead of domain names will like this facility. Some affiliate program providers track IP addresses - they are few but they are there.IP Addresses are generally a good thing. A webhost who has IP numbers would have received a large chunk from the communication provider. And must have bought something substantial. This is not a rule of thumb though.

6) Choosing an affiliate program:

You have to place yourself in the visitor's shoes. Think about what the target audience would like to buy. Is the person single ? Does he or she want to buy CDs, Adult Stuff, electronics, viagra - whatever. I've had good experiences with niche products like viagra, radical software products, some magazines, certain pay per click programs. Whatever it is - if it's going to be a pay per sale program - advertise a product that WILL sell on your site. Most innovations fade out soon. So innvovative products sell only for a little while. You need to keep looking for new and exciting products that the user would like to buy and also which would give the user the satisfaction for the money.

reporting.net and linkshare.com are good places to start looking at what's available on affiliate programs.

7) Choose a reliable vendor.

In case of Adult affiliate programs be careful. Some are Fly by Night Operators. Go for well established companies like http://www.maximumcash.com or http://www.gammacash.com

Make sure they use a third party billing and payout processing service like EPOCH (http://www.epoch.com). This is to be sure that you're gonna get your checks in time. Usually they'll have this on the FAQs or when you get your login and password for the affiliate program - you'll be able to see the revenues at EPOCHs database.

Send the webmaster at the affiliate program company a few stupid questions. If they answer back fast - that means they are ok. Call up and say hello if they have a 800 number.

In case of other affiliate programs like for buying Viagra, (http://www.kwikmed.com) - it's a whole different ball game. Look for new and exciting tech products. Sales hit the highest during a product launch and then starts falling over time to stabilize somewhere. So keep your eyes open and look for new products in the market which a lot of people would like to buy.

8) Put a regular income affiliate on your site to recover charges atleast. If not lots of money atleast you should break even. So put in a search engine search bar. Like http://www.mamma.com or http://www.askjeeves.com or a new group search like http://www.about.com

By charges I mean -Internet time, phone bills, hosting charges if any and Coke supply. $40-$80 should be more than enough anywhere in the US.

9) Creativity - affiliate marketing is REAL marketing. You should use catchy phrases and if there any special offers by the vendors - make sure the visitor knows. You have to inspire confidence in your judgement. Do not give too many alternatives to the surfer. Don't sell Hugo Boss and Jean Paul Gaultier side by side. Or don't use Barnes and Noble and Amazon site by side. It'll not make sense. Give one option but give the best !

10) Look at large vendor sites with affiliate programs. Is the site easy to use ? If not, let it go. Do not market sites that are complicated - have irritating popups and have too many products. Look for a simple signup process. And you'll get better signup ratios.

11) If you have an option for Pay per Clicks and Pay per Signup from the same vendor - take pay per signup. It's better in the long run. Take my word for this. This is true if there is a banner involved. If you get a pay per click program with a text link where you have room to improvise ex: about.com - go for it. Text links get clicked more.

If your site is getting over 5000 hits a day think of signing up with http://www.eads.com or http://www.valueclick.com. These guys are good paymasters and pay 12 to 20 cents per click. And that's the level where you'll prefer these sites over "Pay on Signup" options. These merchants have a strict evaluation process though. So No Objectionable content for their affiliate programs.

12) Once you have a site that's generating some money. Look for bigger money !

Contact "Land Based" vendors who'd like to pay you lump sum for putting up their corporate or product banners. Call up a few companies, swimsuit companies, fashion etc. etc who have a national or international image to take care of and who have a large ad. budget. Speak to the manager promotions or someone in that capacity and submit a proposal.

$5000 bucks for a reasonably popular site (10000-15000 hits a day) for one year is not a bad deal. Estimate charges like this. How many hits a week can you generate for them ? Put up a sample banner. Put in a small CGI script to track out going visitors and multiply it by 15 cents per click for visitors going to the prospective client in one week. You should be able to work out a deal like this. Once you get a deal - keep up committments. Send more traffic than what you had promised. Deliver more !

13) Make friends with a lot of webmasters running similar sites.

14) Respond to all emails for exchanging requests. Choose only those sites which are worthwhile. Even if they don't look like great traffic generation sites - if the content is good consider linking up. You should always help those sites that deserve the help that you got when you started off.

15) Do not use pop ups ! Do not use "circle jerk" facilities where the user is bewildered with scores of windows popping up allover the place. Treat your guests nicely. And be ethical.

i.e : Don't promise the visitor something but present content that's plain trash.

16) Do not write things like : "Please click on my sponsors" etc etc. This does not inspire confidence in you. Remember you are building a brand. Have you ever heard a cigarette company saying "Please buy my cigarettes" ?

People will do what they like to do. You get their interest !

17) Seasonal Purchase Cycles: You have to be aware of purchasing cycles. Adult stuff will sell less on months where expenditures are higher. Christmas etc etc.

For these kinds of months plan ahead. Set up banners for affiliate programs that give Free Shipping on gifts. - A person will like to use the net if there is FREE Shipping or it does not make sense. Walmart is better for regular shopping.

Study the affiliate agreement properly. If you are not planning to keep the banners after the holiday season make sure they do not have a MINIMUM earnings amount before a check is posted. Or you'll be stuck selling Santa's gifts for a long time.

18) Look at your stats regularly. Unproductive reciprocal links are not to be kept for too long - even on compassionate grounds. NO TRAFFIC-NO LINK EXCHANGE.

19) If you see a lot of DIRECT REFERRALS - i.e. people who typed in your URL directly, you're establishing a BRAND. If not, your web site name is not too hot or your site is bad.

20) Three months should be more than enough to get your traffic stabilized. Traffic levels Stabilize - this is a kind of an unwritten law which I've noticed. After a point whatever you do - things are not going to move. And this is the time you should use your experience gained and start a second site. Now you should be able to get the same traffic in half the time if you've been a good student !

21) If an affiliate programs does not pay up or a check does not reach you. Mail them immediately. If there is no response or you feel you're being ripped off - send a reminder.

If nothing happens. There are lots of places that rate affiliate programs. Post your experience there. And also let all webmasters know that you can get your hands on. Cheaters go out of business pretty fast.

22) If you want visitors to contact you put in a guestbook that mails you a copy of an entry. Or a feedback form. MAILTO tags are inconvenient and few people want to open up their mailing software and expose an email address. (A Lot of people browse from office and usually they have the mail software configured with their office email address. And people usually like to give out their "incognito" email addys.)

23) Updating Content : Do not get lazy and stop updating for one year. That's a bad practice. Update as often as time permits, and when you're really upto it go in for a design revamp. Make every new version better than the last !

24) Take user feedback seriously and after incorporating suggestions write back to the user to take a look at the implementations.

25) Dedicate a few Sundays or Saturday nights to this business and treat it like a business and not as a hobby.

26) Remember that if you are in the US - earnings are taxable so plan receiving payments accordingly.

27) Getting to know some good technology affiliate programs:

Browse sites like Shareware.com or Download.com and look for unfamiliar products that are getting a lot of downloads. Look at the product website and if they have an interesting product (based on your liking) go for it if they offer an affiliate program. If you write to the company they may also let you have a fully functional version of the product for free.

Also look at sites that review new software products like Ziff Davis's http://www.zdnet.com. The important thing here is that the product should be good. If it's not the customer ALWAYS has the option of a chargeback. You'll end losing commissions and its the worst feeling seeing commissions being taken back.

28) Avoid Over Exploited Programs:

There are some really good programs that are there but are used by too many web sites. Go for programs that you've not seen too many banner of around. If you're a beginner do not go for those sites promoted by large web companies that gets zillions of hits everyday. The user probably would like to go the URL directly.

29) Put up legal notices, disclaimers and the lot. This will protect you in case you are using dubious or non copyrighted content.

30) Your hosting provider should also know the type of content you are putting up. As most of them have some rules like NO MP3s,limits on FILE SIZES etc. So before you start get these things sorted out. Keep any correspondence on record.

31) Educate the visitor: There are several MULTI LEVEL marketing programs such as AllAdvantage.com, www.spedia.com which pay surfers money for time spent on the net. The user just has to get a small piece of software that places a small viewbar on the screen and keeps flashing ads.

These programs are also pretty heavily exploited. To get user to get onto this scheme, educate the user well. Compare all the programs that are out there. Pick the one you think is best and show the user a tabular comparison of all the programs out there and the one which will give him/her the most money.

Chances are a user may actually change over service and you'll end up getting an affiliate for yourself. Build up a good network of regular surfers and you have your own MLM matrix in place.

32) Freebies - Everyone likes free stuff. If you come across something free on the net - let your users know. Keep a small section for Free Stuff. People like tangibles like Hats, Cologne samples etc. Maybe you cannot afford to buy all your regular visitors a gift but this is the next best thing and can get you a good number of referrals through word of mouth.

Maintain your accounts well. At the end of the year you should be able to take stock of your money earned on the net. And plan for the next year. Here the key is scalability - how much money do you want in a year - how much time can you spend doing this, how much more traffic and how many more sites do you need to make the money you want.

Remember this is not a quick "Get Rich" method but more like farming. So take things slow and in seasons. Returns after a certain period of time will be very steady. A cheap scanner for $80-$100 dollars is more than enough for images for the web kind of resolution.

Here are links to a few software tools that come quite in handy:

http://www.digitaldutch.com/ - A great thumnailer and gallery builder.

http://www.textpad.com/ - A fine text and code editor - great for working with CGI Script.

http://www.jasc.com/ - Home of Paintshop Pro. An affordable graphics package that's easy to use.

http://www.macromedia.com/ - Get your copy of Dreamweaver from here. This is the premier webpage authoring package.

http://www.winzip.com/ - the home of Winzip - a useful compression utility.

http://www.techsmith.com/ - Get SnagIT - a tool for doing screen grabs.

http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/ - Matt's Script Archive - A place to get lots of CGI scripts.

Apart from the money making aspects of being an affiliate program webmaster, this activity is a lot of fun. You'll want to learn more about designing and coding for the web and you'll find that the learning curve is quite high with a large number of free tutorials, code etc.

All the best in your enterprise.