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Which affiliate programs really work?

There are now literally thousands of affiliate programs to choose from - but which ones REALLY earn money and what should you look for in an affiliate program?

The first rule is that you should either choose an affiliate program that closely matches the theme of your site OR create a new site (or mini-site) constructed around an affiliate program. For example, if your site is about computers and computing for beginners - then the Newbie Club Affiliate Program is likely to be an ideal choice. The second option is to build a new page or pages around a theme to match an affiliate program - for example you could join the One & Only and Amazon affiliate programs and then construct a site about love and relationships with pages for personal ads, dating advice and reviews of books about romance, dating and relationships.

You should also make sure that the affiliate program you join is offered by a company who treat their affiliates honestly and fairly; offer 100% accurate tracking of your sales and commissions and answer queries promptly and efficiently. It is also essential that the company offers a high quality product or service that you would be happy to use yourself! Online reputations are hard won and easily damaged - so make sure that you only recommend products and services to your customers that you would be happy to purchase yourself.

We have spent the past three years using dozens of affiliate programs, ranging from Amazon to ZMedia - some of them earned a lot more money than others and some earned nothing at all! Below is our pick of the very best affiliate programs for webmasters. This does not mean that you should join them all - but rest assured that by choosing 1 or 2 from the list below that are the most suitable for your site, you will be joining a proven money maker and working for a company that treats their affiliates fairly and provides them with the support; advice and information they require. We have been paid by ALL of the affiliate programs listed below, so we can vouch for their reliability. Join one or more of these top 10 affiliate programs and with a bit of hard work you could soon be earning a very good income from your web site!

The Top 10

1. Make your site sell: This is a superb affiliate program for Ken Evoys recently updated book of the same name, as well as for his other products. There are 2 major advantages to this affiliate program that make it well worth joining - firstly you get commissions for life on customers you introduce and secondly, when you join the program, you get an amazing free 220 page e-book/manual which shows you not only how to maximise your income from the Make your site sell affiliate program, but is also contains useful advice and tips applicable to all affiliate programs. The number of affiliates is limited though - so if you are thinking of joining then do so as soon as possible! Worth joining for the free manual alone; this program is highly recommended.

2. Direct Leads: An excellent pay-per-lead program with commissions for referrals for free product trials, information requests, sweepstakes entries and the like. If you have a website, you can turn it into extra money by giving away free trials, samples, sweepstakes, coupons, catalogs, and a variety of other offers. This is a very lucrative program, because people do not need to buy anything and therefore conversion rates are higher than standard programs where you earn commission on sales. The offers with the best conversion ratios are listed on the front page of their web site - so you can easily choose the ones which are most likely to earn you good money.

   A similar program, which is also highly recommended is CyberBounty; while another smaller pay per lead network worth looking at is Leadhound, who also have a number of UK offers.

   It is much easier to give away a free trial or offer, or to get people to register free on a web site, than it is to get people to buy a product - hence the success of this type of affiliate program. Conversion ratios (the number of visitors who result in a commission for you) can be as high as 30% on pay per lead offers, while the ratio for pay per sale commissions is usually only 1 or 2%.

   Of the 3 programs, Direct Leads tends to pay more money on some offers than CyberBounty; but it is probably worth joining both of them, as offers do tend to vary between them. Examples of current offers which have worked well for us on Direct Leads are: Priceline Mortgages ($12 payout); Discover Platinum Credit Card ($26.00 payout) and CreditRescue FREE Debt Analysis ($4.20 payout). Highly recommended. On CyberBounty we have done well with FastWeb and Pagoo. Note: you will need to own your own domain and have a good quality web site to be accepted by these programs.

3. Commission Junction: The world's largest affiliate network - they offer a choice of over 1500 affiliate programs that you can apply to join using one username and password. All the programs are free to join - some of them are excellent and you are likely to find one to suit most web sites. They also offer very good online tracking, so you know which banners and text links work best. The site is constantly improving and now features daily stats, a monthly newsletter, message boards for sharing ideas with other affiliates and much more. Another advantage is that you get one payment from all the merchants you join. Another new feature addresses a common problem of many affiliate programs - losing your visitors to the affiliate merchants site - by allowing you to place products on your site and for your customers to order them without leaving your site. Commission Junction are improving their site all the time by adding new features and merchants to maximise your revenue and is well worth joining.

   Particularly highly recommended affiliate programs at Commission Junction include the PeopleFirst Auto Loans affiliate program which pays a very generous $50 per sale commission; 123 inkjet cartridges which pays a 20% commission on every sale; the eBay affiliates program which pays a decent $4 per lead; the similar Half.com affiliate program, which pays $5 per sale; and the Flowers Across America affiliate program which pays a decent 12% commission on a very popular product.

4. Internet Marketing Challenge : This is one of several Internet Marketing Programs available on the internet - however this one also happens to be one of the best. The information offered by Internet Marketing Challenge is of good quality and membership offers full access to this information. Even if you do not become a member or join their excellent affiliate program, you should at least sign up for their free weekly newsletter which is one of the better of the free internet marketing newsletters available on the internet. For web sites that are aimed at webmasters and companies doing business online the Internet Marketing Challenge Affiliate Program offers an outstanding opportunity to earn a good income by selling membership. The site includes articles written by some of the best internet marketing experts as well as some excellent online tools aimed at increasing your online profits and all these are available to members 24 hours a day at no extra cost. In addition questions are answered on an individual basis by e-mail or through bulletin boards. The affiliate program also offers ongoing commission as people renew their membership each year and given the quality of the product the renewal rate is very high. In summary, if you are at all interested in internet marketing, you should take a look at the Internet Marketing Challenge and if your site caters to this audience their affiliate program represents an excellent income opportunity.

5. One & Only Network Affiliate Program focuses on the fast growing area of online personal ads. This is an excellent affiliate program and with very little effort we have increased our earnings from it each month. Monthly payments are sent like clockwork at the beginning of each month - to see one of our recent monthly cheques click here. The programme at One & Only offers different promotions each month to help boost your earnings and their online statistics and reporting are excellent. If you also sign up for the Match.com affiliate program, they will promote Match on your One and Only pages, to earn you more commission. To see our full review of this affiliate program, click here.

   
   

   
   

6. UK Affiliate Programs: If you are based in the UK or have a UK audience for your web site, you may wish to consider joining one of these UK affiliate program networks. All of them pay in pounds and you receive one cheque for all the merchants you sign up to.
   • UK Affiliates / DGM: A site offering UK web site owners (or web sites aimed at a UK audience) access to a choice of over 50 affiliate programs from leading UK web merchants. New merchants are added regularly - from the current selection we particularly recommend I want one of those! who offer 5% commission [and a 9999 day cookie!] on a wide selection of "stuff you don't need...but you really want". (A great site for gadgets, big boys toys, executive gifts and lifestyle accessories). Also sign up for the similar Firebox affiliate program. Other good programs at UK Affiliates are My Offers (60p per sign up to a free prize draws site) and William Hill (online betting - £10 per lead). Also on offer are affiliate programs from well known UK companies - including Comet (electrical goods); Woolworths; and Thomas Cook Travel. Payment is monthly.

   • Tradedoubler is another site offering a good selection of pay per lead, pay per click and pay per sale Europe and UK based affiliate programs. New uk affiliate schemes are being added every week - so sign up now and you will get regular updates. Recommended merchants include: Workthing (5p per click); Bensons World (videos and dvds) and Ciao (consumer opinions - 2p per click and 50p per lead). Recent additions include lots of household names - Debenhams; Currys Electrical; John Lewis; Waitrose; Dell UK; Dixons; PC World; Homebase and Tesco. Payment is made monthly directly into your bank account.

   • Affiliate Window currently offers affiliate programs from 63 UK merchants - with new merchants being added every few weeks. They are friendly, helpful and pay on time every month. Minimum payment is only twenty five UK pounds. Recommended merchants (ones we have done well with) include fotango; just graduates and just engineers.
   
   Also note that Commission Junction (reviewed above) now offer affiliate programs from a number of UK merchants (including Capital One, Argos, Boots, Littlewoods, Marbles and Mothercare) AND you can select to be paid in pounds.

7. The Scholarship & Grant Guide is an excellent affiliate program offering a service which is in high demand. There are some great affiliate support materials, including a Free e-book encoded with your affiliate url for you to give away. The site is run by the same people as the Newbie Club. There is lots of useful advice on improving your sales and the product is very popular. Ideal for web sites aimed at school and college leavers.

8. All Posters Affiliates Program : A great way to make money with your website. Link to All Posters and earn 20%-25% of every purchase made by your site visitors at their website. You can choose from a selection of over 50,000 poster and art print images as well as banners and search boxes. The great thing about this affiliate program is that they have images related to just about everything (e.g. movies, music, sports, art, animals) so no matter what the content of your site, you will find images to fit! It’s also easy to sign-up, track your sales, and build links because the site generates all the HTML for you. Some affiliates are making thousands of dollars a month with this one and the generous commission means that it is highly recommended.

9. Club Mom: is an excellent affiliate program and they pay 25c per lead for free membership to the Club Mom web site. They have a dedicated affiliate manager (Shawn Collins), who is very helpful and also have a mailing list for affiliates to support and help each other. Highly recommended.

10. Refer Back - Casino Affiliate Programs: Casinos, like personals have been proven to be one of the success stories of the internet. Although not for everyone, promoting online casinos can be very profitable. The advantage of joining Refer Back is that you can promote several of the most popular online casinos from one account and receive your commissions in one payment. You also get excellent service and support, which in turn ensures ongoing and long-term business.

    Also recommended is the Casino Coins Casinos Affiliate Program - again you can promote several popular online casinos from one account, including English Harbor Casino, Caribbean Gold Casino and Silver Dollar Casino. A similar casino affiliate program network is run by Casino Rewards.

Other useful resources:

If you are new to affiliate programs then there are hundreds of books; e-books; private web sites and the like, all claiming to help you (and aiming to make money by doing so!). There is no need to spend a fortune on dozens of expensive internet marketing courses and e-books, but a couple of well chosen sources of information can save you a lot of time and help you to learn at least some of the techniques used by 'super affiliates'. If you are looking for some good affiliate marketing advice, here are a few suggestions. (By the way, I have bought and read all of the e-books / books that I recommend below as I am not prepared to recommend something that I was not happy to pay money for myself!) There are 3 e-books in particular that I would recommend - especially for beginners - although experienced affiliates should learn a few tricks of the trade too!

The first of these is Ken Evoy's 'Make your site sell', mentioned above. This has recently been updated and although not perfect, it is packed with useful information and for the price it is an absolute bargain. Take a look at the entire table of contents and see what you think. By the way, if you already own the original edition of Make Your Site Sell, then you can upgrade to the new version for less than $10 - a bargain!

Also ideal for those new to affiliate marketing is Chuck McCullough's new Affiliate Mistakes e-book which is based on his own experience as an affiliate and could save you from making the same mistakes that stop many affiliates from realising the full potential of affiliate marketing. If you are not earning as much as you expected to from affiliate programs, this e-book will help you find out exactly what you need to know to earn more commission each and every month. This e-book prints out to 114 A4 pages, so there's lots of good information to learn from. Chuck covers the top ten mistakes made by affiliates - having made many of these mistakes myself I know that spending a few dollars on this book could save you a lot of time and money in your affiliate marketing efforts. Although some of the mistakes may seem obvious (not having your own domain name or trying to promote dozens of different affiliate programs), most affiliates have made - or are making - at least one of the mistakes in this book! Ideal for anybody new to affiliate marketing, although most people should learn a thing or two from Affiliate Mistakes - plus it comes with 4 free bonus reports including an excellent guide to getting listed in Yahoo and a good little e-book on mini sites.

Finally, anything written by Michael Campbell is worth looking at and he has just finished a brand new e-book titled Clickin' it Rich. Not the greatest of title's perhaps, but this is a good guide to earning money from your web site by working from home using affiliate programs. The best thing about Clickin' it Rich is that rather than just giving you loads of theoretical internet marketing advice; Michael provides actual examples of how he (and others) earn money from affiliate programs. Michael's e-book prints out to 55 A4 pages, but don't let the small size put you off - he takes a quality rather than quantity approach with lots of good detailed advice. This book will certainly get you thinking and spark off new ideas - I learnt a lot from this, so even those who have been using affiliate marketing for a while are likely to benefit from the information in Clickin' it Rich. I particularly like Michael's advice on his 'top 15 money earning affiliate categories' where he highlights the products and services which earn him the most money online. Valuable advice and info here, which could save you hours of research - and no the top 15 are not all 'info products' and 'affiliate marketing' products (although these are on his list) but also lots of products and services that the general public buy and use each and every day. Michael also provides a few brief examples of how other affiliates he knows are making good money online - for example one woman is profits from common spelling mistakes to get her web site ranking high in the search engines - earning a good income through her affiliate links as a result.

If you would prefer a 'paper' book rather than an e-book, then amazon offers Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy: a Doctor Ebiz Guide by the highly experienced Ralph Wilson - a top international authority on Web marketing and e-commerce. This excellent 272 page guide to internet marketing is available to order online from amazon.co.uk and amazon.com. Although this book is not exclusively aimed at affiliates, there is a great deal of useful information in here, from one of the 'good guys' in the internet marketing field which is of benefit to anybody marketing online.

Web page by Mark Southgate, Click Profits Affiliate Programs Guide, E-mail:affiliateprograms@clickprofits.cjb.net
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