Jan 31 2008
How Successful Bloggers Identify Good Affiliate Programs
Bloggers commonly have two sources of significant income: money earned from the sponsored advertisements of affiliate programs, and the income coming from paid reviews. Signing up for an affiliate program is much easier to do than registering for programs that pays for every review post you make. Affiliate programs only require you to have a running website – that is why it’s the easiest thing to do if you want to monetize your new blog site.
Paid review programs usually require a certain reputation, PageRank (PR) level of a blog and number of existing blog posts, before an applicant is accepted to the program. Rumors about Google penalizing blog sites who participate in paid reviews, which in their view is a way of building links “artificially”, also discourages new bloggers to get involved to the said program. However, doing paid reviews still and yet the biggest income source of popular bloggers like John Chow.
One of successful bloggers’ qualities is that they are very good at identifying trustworthy affiliate programs. They can easily detect which one’s reliable and a real money maker, and which one isn’t. Knowing such is important especially because everyone on the blogosphere wants to succeed. Unfortunately, it is certain that there are really chances where hard work doesn’t pay off, efforts backfire, and time is wasted. These can be minimized by following the guidelines successful bloggers follow in determining good and reliable affiliate programs.
The merchant should be legitimate and contactable.
If you feel that a certain merchant, the one who offers affiliate program, seems obscure and ambiguous, you should prevent from doing business with them. There have been many bloggers and affiliate marketers who became victims of fraud in the world of online marketing. Determine your merchant’s reputation by reading reviews, testimonials, and the success stories of their existing members. Also, ensure that they provide contact information and that they eager to listen to their affiliates’ inquiries and problems.
Commissions are substantial.
The commission of the products you want to promote must be substantial in itself. This is to ensure that the products are worth advertising for. If you are selling $3 item, then you must make a lot of sales to earn satisfactory revenue. It can be as difficult when you are trying to promote a high-ticket item – 20% to 40% commissions are already acceptable. If your blog is new, you may not worry about commissions being substantial or not.
There is a demand for the product.
How willing are you to market a product if nobody even wants to buy it? Well, that is indeed a question. There must be a sensible demand for the merchant’s products towards online consumer market. If you already have a blog site, your sponsored ads must match to your site’s theme or topic. Doing such will help you build credibility to your suggestions and product recommendations. Doing a keyword such on Google or Overture.com will help you determine a product’s online market demand.
Commissions are traceable in real-time.
If your friend purchases a certain product by clicking the affiliate button on your blog, the commissions earned should immediately reflect to the affiliate tracking software. Merchants running vague tracking software are a minus to the reliability of their affiliate program.
Promote relevant products.
If you are building a niche blog, it’s pointless if you join affiliate programs that aim to sell products irrelevant to your website’s topics (unless you can personally vouch that there is a high interest of the merchant’s products). However, I still highly suggest that you only promote appropriate products as this may translate to better conversion rates.
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