An affiliate program is an agreement with a merchant and an affiliate. You send the merchant traffic, if they buy something you get paid a commission on the product, usually a percentage of its price.
You shouldn't be looking to make a living from these things unless you're really serious. They won't make you rich quick. Be aware that nearly 90% of affiliates don't earn a lot of money from any particular program. It takes work, determination and a bit of creativity.
To succeed in affiliate programs you firstly need to find a good product to sell. If the merchant looks shady, drop it. If the tracking is poor, drop it. If the merchant's site is poorly designed – if they won't get the sale from anyone you refer - drop it. Basically, if you would feel safe buying the product and you think it's great, then it's worth promoting. Otherwise, drop it.
Remember, most people don't buy on their first visit to a site, so the program absolutely must have good tracking.
A restriction on the number of affiliates is a good thing too – it means once the good get going the market won't be flooded and in the end everyone gets more money.
Once you have your program, you need an idea. Be original. Please don't make another marketing site. The Internet has enough of those. The best thing to do is find a niche and fill it with a good, content oriented web site. These take more work, but attract repeat visitors, which means more chances to sell stuff to them.
Or you can make a mini–site; a small two or three page site that is devoted to a product, stresses benefits, and is honed like a samurai sword to get the sale. It is designed to have a person visit it, see the great copy you've written, and go onto the merchant's site to buy the product. You don't aim to get repeat visitors.
Both mini–sites and larger content oriented sites can be successful, but keep in mind larger sites mean larger work. Mini–sites are harder to write. They have to be tightly focused and tasteful – not a straight out sales pitch. You shouldn't use straight out sales pitches anyway – that's what the merchant does; the referral won't want to see it twice (on both your site and the merchant's). For more info on mini-sites have a look here
Next you have to craft your site into a sales machine. The best way to learn how to write a killer site is to get SiteSell's Make Your Site Sell! I've read it and I think the world of it. It's the only marketing book I recommend.
Right, back to the nitty–gritty. To design a good site you have to stick to the plot. Don't waffle on about yourself. People don't care about you. They are only one click away from hitting the back button. You have to rivet them to their monitors with attention grabbing, hard hitting and SHORT copy. Here's a short poem from Make Your Site Sell:
"Tell me quick and tell me true
Or else my friend to hell with you"
"Not How the product came to be,
But what the damn thing does for me"
That sums it up beautifully.
Craft compact copy that grabs attention, stresses benefits, and above all is credible. Don't use too many exclamation marks (!) too often!!!!!!!! They look stupid!!!!!!!! Your site will reek of hype!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It looks unprofessional!!!!!!!!! and takes ages to read!!!!!! People won't trust you!!!!!!!!! Then they won't buy from you!!!!!!! Then you won't get any money!!!!!!!
Try not to write paragraphs longer than about 3 sentences or 5 lines. They're daunting. They put people off.
Triple check your work. Make sure it's perfect. Once it is, make it shorter. Triple check it, then shorten it again.
Try not to use banners. They hardly ever work. Use text links instead. A personally endorsed text link will get a much better click–through–rate than a banner. If you must use banners, use them sparingly, two per page, one at the top, one at the bottom, max.
Don't spam. If a complete stranger walked straight into your house, opened your fridge, got out all your food and sat down in front of your TV, made a big mess all over your carpet and the whole time ignored you, and THEN launched a pathetic sales pitch, would you buy from them? No way! Spam is just like that – inconsiderate. Don't spam. It doesn't work.
Get yourself a newsletter; opt–in e–mail, where people can chose to join and leave your mailing list. Make the content credible and useful – not all sale pitches and product reviews – else people won't read it and you'll never get any new subscribers. Useful newsletters have high click–through–rates compared to other forms of advertising. They work good.
Now, pay attention! Write your HTML last. It's much easier and most importantly quicker. Write and edit your copy in a word processor (I use WordPad because it's so plain and simple), THEN add the HTML. Otherwise you'll spend forever tweaking the look and feel and spend little time on the actual copy, which is the most important part of the site.
Draw traffic to your site. A killer site will go to waste without people to look at it. Learn how to optimize for search engines. A great place is RankWrite. Subscribe to their free newsletter and you won't regret it. Also check out PayPerClickSearchEngines.com. Pay–per–click search engines are a great way to get highly targeted traffic to your site. They're worth every penny.
Treat search engines like your best friend and they'll treat you likewise. Treat them like dirt and they'll treat you likewise. Don't try and trick them; try to please them. They are the most common way you get new visitors to your site. They're worth having on your side.
One of the most important things – go hard. Most people don't earn that much because they don't put that much effort in. Nothing comes for free in this world. You have to earn it. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Beethoven's music teacher told him he was a hopeless composer. You can do it if you try.
Most importantly of all, lighten up! The Internet is a huge place, there are unfilled niches everywhere – opportunities everywhere, you can find something that's right for you if you only look.
Remember : )
Good luck, you can do it!
Christopher Pearce
February 20, 2001
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