Tips & Guides — 22 Dec 2020
Looking for Affiliate Programs?
Partnering up with brands and retailers every day benefits thousands of publishers in the form of regular cash incomes.
Affiliate marketing, or as it’s also known – partner marketing, is one of the best ways to make money online with your media platform and social network.
Whether affiliate marketing is an additional source of earnings or your main income, you will, either way, want to partner with the best affiliate programs to drive more revenue.
In short, the affiliate program is an arrangement between a business and its partners (affiliates) who send traffic to a product or drive its sales for commissions. Most often, affiliate partners promote products through affiliate websites or social media.
How do advertisers track from which affiliate marketer a particular click or sale came? It’s pretty simple. Typically, an affiliate is given a unique link (an affiliate link) through which clicks are tracked using cookies.
There are many different affiliate programs out there, but not all are equally good for everyone. The capability to find and choose the most suitable partner programs allows your online business to get the prime benefits from affiliate marketing.
As simple as it may sound, an online search engine is an easy and direct way to find the best affiliate programs in your niche. You can type in “affiliate marketing programs” plus your specific niche in the search box. You can also look for particular vendors and what affiliate programs they offer. For example, we all know that Amazon and eBay have their own affiliate programs.
The one thing you must pay attention to straight away is where an affiliate program operates. Often high paying affiliate programs are not available in all countries and can be used only in the United States, for example.
You can also search for affiliate directories. Affiliate directories are places where affiliate program managers post information about their program and partners come to find the best affiliate programs in their niche. Thus, you can search for offers by category, niche, type, and commission size, which is very convenient.
Find high-paying affiliate programs through referral links from other bloggers, influencers, and affiliate sites. It would be much better if you know who your direct competitors are and whom they are promoting. For these purposes, you can use competitor analysis tools or search for content similar to yours.
After that, you need to find and study the affiliate links of competitors. Usually, those links will contain a unique ID or some other referral tags. Following these links, you will be redirected to a product web-page, where you can search for information about affiliate programs. Mostly, this information is hidden in the footer of the website.
Another great way to find more affiliate programs is to look for similar products or even your current vendors’ competitors. Don’t dwell on the success of just one affiliate program. Pay attention to other brands and products; see if they have similar affiliate programs.
Doubts may arise as to how one promotes competing brands or products. Don’t let this bother you, there are proven methods of how affiliates handle these cases. For example, you can write a comparative review of two competing products. This doesn’t only give your audience a much-needed choice but also increases your subscribers’ loyalty and overall conversion rate.
You don’t necessarily need to advertise the same product type; you can promote different categories of products from competing retailers. Analyze the received information and look for new, equivalent affiliate programs.
Affise Reach is an affiliate ecosystem that connects both parties: advertisers and new marketing channels. For publishers, Affise Reach saves time hunting for high-quality affiliate programs and advertisers.
You can integrate with brands and affiliate networks from any vertical in just a few clicks. This solution also allows you to promote yourself as a reliable partner and help direct advertisers reach you out. Affise Reach gives you an opportunity to work with famous brands and marketing experts in one place online.
First and foremost, working with products you like – can increase chances to succeed in affiliate marketing. And your willingness to work. Of course, not always you will be fully delighted with every product. Still, good knowledge can help to generate enthusiasm or even passion. Get to know the product closer, read more about it, use it. If you come across a product that doesn’t fit your profile, learn as much as possible about it. In the affiliate marketing business, you are free to choose a product that you believe in. Sell what you love, and it stops being a job.
It may seem obvious for some, but this point is crucial to note. The selection of products related to your content’s central theme has a significant impact on your success. Even so, you can think broader and show creative thinking. For example, if you are blogging about dog care, you may go further than advertising solely dog care products. You can also promote events for dog owners, pet insurance, fitness apps for working out with dogs, etc.
Even if you know your subscribers for a long time, it won’t hurt to revisit this topic. The better you analyze your target audience’s desires, the easier it will be to make great affiliate sales.
Create a portrait of the customer as close to the real person as possible. Better yet, survey your audience about which products they want the most. You can conduct polls via email or post comments.
If you don’t have enough target audience yet, then conduct a social network study, see what problems your competitors’ audience faces. When you find an affiliate program that solves your target audience’s issues, you are in for great success.
Another essential aspect when choosing affiliate programs is how much you will earn from their commission. You need to remember a simple rule and not make a beginner’s mistake of chasing the highest affiliate commissions.
It’s often the case – higher commissions are set on affiliate products with a low sales rating or a high cost of lead acquisition, and low payouts indicate that the product is sold very well and cost per lead is relatively low. Try to imagine the bigger picture when choosing affiliate programs.
For clarity, consider a simple example. Let’s say you have two affiliate products (product A and product B) at the same price. You sold 9 products A with a 1% commission per product and only one product B with a 10% commission. As a result, the product with the lower commission made you more money due to the number of affiliate sales.
There is no complicated mathematics here either. Continuing with the previous point, if you choose an affiliate program with a more expensive product, then even a smaller amount of sales can be a better deal.
Quite simply, if you sell five products for $1000, it’s the same as selling ten products for $500. If you are confident in your target audience and in that this affiliate program will qualitatively solve people’s problems, then feel free to promote more expensive goods.
As a bonus, some affiliate programs may even reward you for customers’ repeat purchases of the same product. You can also pay attention to this condition of the offer.
Pay attention to the upsell policy in eCommerce affiliate programs – this is another way to increase the commission rate. When a buyer purchases car parts, he is offered a different range of products or services, such as installing car parts, a set of wiper blades, and car oil. The point of upselling is that you also get a passive income for all additional sales with a product.
When choosing a new affiliate program, give preferences to more experienced vendors. The reputation and popularity of long-established brands can guarantee you higher traffic. Of course, you shouldn’t overturn affiliate programs of new vendors, especially if they have offers with excellent conditions.
Another factor concerning merchants is the level of support they provide. Along the way, absolutely different problems may arise. It’s always better to partner with a vendor who will tell you how to solve an issue. The quality affiliate programs come with relevant marketing materials, such as landing pages, banners, and ad copies.
Before you make a decision on partnering with a vendor you can ask for reports on his previous performance. Usually, advertisers have statistics on their performance from affiliate marketing networks or partner programs, if they run their own partner program. It will help you find out whose affiliate programs are better at converting visitors into sales and become a successful affiliate.
One important element of affiliate marketing is an effective technology solution. It must be convenient both for advertisers and for affiliates.
Affise, as an all-in-one partner marketing platform for brands, advertising agencies, and affiliate networks. Our technology and long-standing experience allow you to automate every step of the advertising campaign lifecycle and make data-driven decisions. Further, it provides a networking platform to find and establish new partnerships.
Written by
Content Manager
Edgar is a Content Marketer obsessed with analytics & performance statistics. Edgar loves leveling up professionally and search for new effective ways to deliver quality content. After that, he’ll take every opportunity to take on exciting adventures with his GF.
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