Everywhere you look you see affiliate
program offers for
every product or service that you can think of. Some
have
fully automated systems that sell high volumes of hard
products all over the world. In case you don't know,
"hard"
products are those that you can touch...unlike an
ebook or
downloadable web template. Many affiliate programs
have
several thousand affiliates and one or two of the
bigger
companies have over one million affiliates.
What are the advantages of joining an
affiliate program?
They provide a ready-made business.
This is a very big plus
for those people who want to earn some kind of living
off
the Internet but lack the knowledge or inclination to
set up
a business by themselves.
Commissions and rewards are generally
good, and the more
established programs offer a real chance of
advancement to
higher and better-paid levels.
Other affiliates are usually on hand
to offer practical
support.
What are the limitations?
You are restricted in your promotional
activities due to the
fact that you do not actually own the affiliate site
they
give you. You won't be able to put such things as
banners,
images, links, meta tags, etc. onto your page.
The URL of your affiliate page is often either too
long or
contains such awkward things as question marks, which
many
Search Engines will not index.
Any promotional ads or articles have
probably already been
used by thousands of other people and consequently may
have
lost its impact, making it more difficult to achieve
sales
or referrals.
If the program you have joined has not
yet established
itself (or in some cases even if it has), then you may
encounter problems with payments owed to you not being
honored. You also run the risk of low quality products
or
sub-standard statistics that do not accurately record
how
many referrals or sales you have made.
You may be required to purchase a
minimum quantity of the
product on a regular basis before you start to qualify
for
commissions or even before you can become an
affiliate.
You may not get the technical or affiliate support you
might
expect from the company. This may be due to inadequate
staffing, or the company's negligence.
Other people in your downline do
nothing to promote the
program.
At least four of the above limitations
can be overcome with
a little time and effort. You could, for example, come
up
with fresher ads to promote the program (provided this
is
allowed).
If the company supplies the email
addresses of people in
your downline, then you could offer to help the less
active
members. Very often these people are passive not
because
they are lazy or apathetic but merely because they
don't
know HOW to promote effectively! your guidance could
mean
the difference between no sales or referrals and
healthy
downlines and residual incomes.
As regards promoting your actual page,
here are a couple of
little tricks that should overcome a number of
restrictions:
Cloak your Affiliate URL to stop
hijackers Affiliate Masker
While this will not help you to get listed on the
major
Search Engines, it will make your web page easier for
prospects to remember and type into their browser's
address
bar.
Go to your affiliate page. Place your
mouse pointer anywhere
on the page and right click once. In the drop-down box
choose "View Source". This will display the HTML for
the
page. Save this to your hard drive as a HTML document
using
the "Save As" function. Upload the page to your
web site.
If you don't have a web site then get some free web
space
from one of these:
Submit your 'new' page to the Search
Engines. You are also
now able to place banner codes, links, images,
testimonials,
in fact anything you want onto these pages, because
you are
in control of the HTML. A word of caution, though.
Don't
change the actual HTML of your original affiliate
page. Just
put the other stuff, like banners etc, around it.
Making this "mirror page" of your
affiliate page will
dramatically improve your advertising options.
You have permission to publish this
article in your ezine or on your web site, free of
charge, as long as the byline is included and the
article is included in it's entirety. I also ask that
you activate any html links found in the article and
in the byline.
You may not use this article in any
publication that is not-optin (spam). A courtesy copy
of the publication or link to the website you use my
article on would be appreciated.
