How To Choose An Affiliate Program That Pays You Money

Are you an affiliate? Or do you want to make to make money online as an affiliate? If that sounds like you, I'm going to make it worth your while to read the whole of this short article. "How?", you ask. Well to put it bluntly, unless you are choosing the right affiliate programs (and products) to promote, you're going to struggle to make any money online.

Go Where The Money Is....

First off lets not waste any time trying to crack small unproven niches. We want to go where the big boys (and girls) are already raking in the cash. So how do we find them? Simple, go to Amazon, eBay, internet forums, yahoo answers, and any other similar sites and see what is selling. In places like Amazon and eBay look for top sellers, best sellers, or categories with many products and reviews. See what is selling.

Your finding a market. Not just any market, but a proven market, one which already has ravenous buyers, who will happily give there money away 'hand over fist' to get what they want. These are the people we are after.

Let's take an example. The health and well being niche. It's a huge market with lots of products in a range of categories, e.g. weight loss, fitness, alternative medicine etc. Each of these can be subdivided further, e.g. how to lose 10 pounds, get a six pack, stop smoking ect – it's massive. Use the popularity and market size to get an idea of what's selling and what people want, because that's what you're going to give them, and they'll pay you for the trouble.

Use internet forums and places such as yahoo answers to find out popular topics and find out their problems. Hopefully they should correlate well with the niches we uncovered previously.

Find An An Affiliate Program (and Product) That Pays...

Next up, you want to find affiliate products that you can promote that directly target the market you have just uncovered. You can find digital products at clickbank.com, paydotcom.com and physical products from cj.com and linkshare.com. All of these offer revenue sharing or affiliate relationships with vendors.

You want to find a program/product that pays you a high commission – you're doing all the work after all. I always look for over 50% on digital products, sometimes you'll be able to get up to 75% commission, so you actually make more per sale than the vendor! On physical products look for over 10%.

Ideally the affiliate program/products should provide you with secure links so you can avoid affiliate link theft, and if possible have link tracking (if not use a program such as Adtrackz to track your links).

The vendor should also have a good sales process, well written (professional) sales letters, an easy way to contact customer support and excellent customer support. Also see if they have an automated follow up system in place, as you can get paid on sales made at a later date if a proper autoresponder/newsletter system is in place.

Another thing to look out for is if you can get paid by referring other affiliates. Some vendors will offer you a commission on all sales made by affiliates you refer, or have products for their affiliates with which you can earn commission on (as well as the normal products). <

Here are two case studies from the health niche to demonstrate some of the points we've discussed:

Case Study 1: Joe Bucks: jobucks.info

JoeBucks.info sell a range of health products, primarily supplements. They have an excellent system for affiliates, providing a range of creatives such as banners and also give their affiliates a free website for each product. They provide detailed conversion tracking reports and their websites all have great marketing systems and copy in place to maximise sales. Plus a whole lot more that I don't have space to mention.

JoeBucks.info also pay 50% commission on all orders and also 50% commission on re-orders made by customers at a later date, allowing you to earn month after month if the customer keeps ordering. Another huge benefit is that you can get paid by referring other affiliates, you make a commission of 5% of any sales they refer.

Health supplements are a booming marketing and it looks like it will continue for a long while, so this would be one affiliate program definitely worth joining.

Case Study 2: VIP Health Secrets: viphealthsecrets.com/affiliates.html

VIPHealthSecrets.com is another affiliate program worth joining. They sell a growing range of health related information products. The salesletters appear well written and professionally done and they offer a free membership with lots of health reports for prospects to download, then they upsell prospects to their special reports.

They pay 75% commission on all sales which is at the top end of commission scales. As they sell a range of products you have the potential to earn not just on one sale, but on multiple sales. They currently use a secure system to protect your affiliate links, and provide a lot of affiliate promotional tools, such as viral reports, articles and banners. They also give affiliates a free website which promotes all their products as well as educating the visitors.

One of this best things about the viphealthsecrets.com is the training resources provided to help you earn commission. They give a range of free reports which are specially designed to help you maximise your affiliate commission. Another benefit is that you can get paid for referring other affiliates, as they sell an affiliate marketing product to new affiliates and you'll get commission on that as well as the health products.

These two affiliate programs would link in well together. As you could promote the supplements from Joe Bucks and the information products from viphealthsecrets.com and you'd have a great combination.

Strike While The Iron Is Hot...

If you've got this far you've done really well, and hopefully you'll have learn a thing or two as well. If you only a a few things from this article, remember go where the money is, give people what they want and spend some time choosing carefully affiliate programs/products that pay. So get out there while this information is hot in your mind, and start your path to affiliate marketing profits.