Tips for finding the best affiliate programs that will fit with your website.

  You can advertise the greatest programs & products in the world - but if your visitors aren't interested, you may as well be advertising nothing at all. Because they aren't buying, are they?

  This section is devoted to figuring out what type of merchants / products would work best if you added them to your existing website.

  Finding the perfect affiliate program(s) to match your website - and your average visitor - can be difficult. Doing it wrong can make all your hair fall out. Doing it right will make it all grow back. (I Wish)...

  Ignore the hype-masters who tell you that their [cell phone/satellite dish/pool cleaner] product sells like crazy. If your site is about making and selling your own hand-knitted tablecloths, then a good company to advertise for might be a candle company. Or a flatware company. Not a cellphone company. You see? Tablecloths and candles or flatware "go" together much better than tablecloths and cellphones.

  It doesn't matter if one cellphone sale nets you $50 - if you only sell one every six months. I'd bet that a tablecloth website would net much more than $50 from candles every month.

  Before we get into finding specific merchants or products:

  The First thing: You have to know who your audience is.
  Before you can find the right programs to join you must first get to know your average visitor... or have a good idea of what your visitors are looking for and interested in. You can get a good idea about that several ways.

  Use the log data from your server. It will tell you quite a bit about your visitors. The most useful data would be the search terms they used to find your website. That's what they are looking for. So give it to them. You won't sell many diapers to people searching for retirement villas in France, but I'd bet that you could sell them flight insurance. Or audio books to listen to on the plane.

  Use the reports from your site-search service. FreeFind sends weekly reports of what words people use when they use the site-search feature. You can use that data to help decide what type of products or services to focus on.

  Use polls. The exact method would vary with different websites, but the idea is to gather demographic data about your average visitor. Then tailor the wording and images of your ads to your average visitor.

  Starting a new website and don't have any historical visitor data?
  Use common sense. If your website is about making and selling custom cloth book covers it makes little sense to advertise for a satellite dish company. Advertise for Barnes&Noble or MagazinesRUs instead. Sure, the commissions are smaller, but there will be a lot more of them.

  Define your "target audience". Until your site is up for a while you will have to do without any 'hard data' about your visitors. So sit down and list all the key words and phrases that people may use to find your product / service.
  Determine, if you can, who the average person is who might be interested in what your website has to offer.

  You Can't Be Everything To Everybody!
  Narrow your focus, advertise for companies that will coincide with or compliment your own product or website topic... don't try to sell stuff that your average visitor is not going to be interested in. That will just annoy them.

  Your best bet? Find your little corner of the internet and exploit it. Your visitors will find you based (mostly) on the words you have placed on your website. No matter what your website is about, if you pick a few good merchants and/or complimentary products and concentrate on them, you will succeed.

  OKAY. Now you probably have a good idea of what type of product or services to add to your website. Now let's talk about how you find the right merchants....

 

I strongly recommend that you get some sort of tracking program to keep all your affiliate data organized. If you want a recommendation, it would be hard for me to find anything wrong with Affiliate Manager - it's easy to use, reasonably priced and will keep all the info you will need safe and secure.

  Finding Merchants
  They're all over the place, thousands of them. Everywhere you turn you're tripping over them. You can't advertise for all of them, so how do you narrow it down to the best ones to fit in with the theme of your website?

  Two primary methods:
  1) Join and use an Affiliate Network. They have many merchants listed. You can (usually) search for merchants by keyword or product, by brand, by company name, etc.
  2) Do some Google searching and Find Them Yourself. Search with your own keywords, by brand, by location, etc. You can be really picky this way. If you look at a merchants website and don't want to associate with them, just leave.


  Once you find a few merchants that you think would be a good 'fit' with your website:
  Compare them. Compare price, shipping policy, return policy, etc. Compare their shopping cart systems. Compare their websites overall usability. Decide which one you would prefer to do business with, as a customer.

Note: Watch for a prominent 800-number showing on a merchants pages... if they show one, odds are pretty good that you will lose sales commissions to their phone system. Very few merchants will even ask a caller to provide an affiliate code when they call.

  In a very real way you are going to be putting your reputation, or at least the perceived validity of your website, on the line. So you want to associate with the best possible partner. This will have a direct effect on your long-term success as a webmaster and as an affiliate.

  Once you have found a company that you would like to associate with, finding their affiliate program details is usually easy. Most of them will have a small link, at or near the bottom, that simply says "affiliate program" or "partners"... something like that. Some of them have it really big, near the top. Depends on how much emphasis that company puts on recruiting new affiliates.

  Read the affiliate agreement carefully. I can't stress this part enough. You need to know what you're getting into should you decide to apply. Make notes about the payment options, linking options & limitations, etc.

  Some of those 'Join our Program' links will take you to an affiliate network, some to the merchant in-house affiliate program. If it's a network that you already joined, apply to that merchant program from the network website.
  If it's a network that you don't belong to, go to the network main page and apply from there, not from the merchant website. After you are accepted, then join the merchant program.

  You may not find a 'Join our Program' link. that's ok, just find the contact page and send them an email.

  Some merchants work with two or more networks. They won't tell you that, but if you don't belong to one network and you want to partner with a particular merchant, there may be another option. Email them and ask if there is an optional affiliate program.

A few thoughts about Affiliate Network Programs -vs- "In-House" Privately-run Programs.

Networks:
  At the risk of over-generalizing: The top affiliate networks are (for the most part) easy to work with, full of merchants and experienced at this game.

  The benefits of working with a network:
* They will provide a fairly wide assortment of linking methods.
* Most have a pretty good "Affiliate Training Center".
* You will be able to track your statistics for several merchants from one place.
* Low minimum payouts and your earnings will be combined into one check, sent by the network.

  The drawbacks to working with affiliate networks are:
  1) You cannot adapt the provided text links to your audience. With very few exceptions, it's "use it or forget it". If you can convince them that your audience would respond better to a different wording, they may allow you to edit the text.
  2) They tend to concentrate most of their man-hours on the big affiliates that are moving tons of product. If you're just starting out you can't expect that they will find the time to give you the one-on-one kind of help that you need the most.

  That's assuming that they accept your application at all. Many of them require a minimum daily (or monthly) traffic level before they open the doors to you.

  So, if you get accepted to an affiliate network, plan on learning their system quirks all by yourself. Some of them have affiliate FAQ or Help pages, but it's still a struggle until you learn your way around.

"In-House" Programs
  Privately-run programs can be either really great or really sucky. Depends on how much effort the company is willing to put into their affiliate program and the person who is managing it.
  So how to find out who the bad ones are? Simply talk to other webmasters... Join the forum at ABestWeb - the primary focus there is on affiliate programs.

  You can also send an email to the merchant affiliate manager and see how quickly they respond. You should get a reply within one business day. It's not a good sign if it takes them three days to reply.

  For the most part, though, you can't tell if a merchant program is well run until after you get into it.

  There are some real benefits to getting into a well run in-house merchant affiliate program:
* Linking options - most of them are willing to give you a pretty free hand in how you set up the affiliate links. Many will even set up special linking, datafeeds and storefront codes, allowing you to showcase some or all of their products right on your site.
* Personal help. It's been my experience that most of them are ready and willing to help you in any way they can... after all, the better you do, the better they look to their boss.

  There are a few drawbacks to working with them though:
1) Time. It can be tedious to find and apply to them, but it's not really a decision that should be rushed into.
2) Payments. Payroll options are as varied as the companies themselves. Some have fairly high payment thresholds and limited payment options.
3) Some of the larger, well-known merchants don't want to work with you until you have a minimum amount of traffic.

Other Services:

  Things you can do to get better conversions & make more with your chosen programs.

  AffiliateMatch Directory

  Track & protect your affiliate data with Affiliate Manager!