Selecting Affiliate Programs

Evaluate any affiliate program according to these criteria--BEFORE you sign up!

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, September, 1998)

Yes, I know, I said I'd be on vacation this month. But our new home/office is almost unpacked.

By now, almost anyone with a website has heard about affiliate programs—where the referring site, or "publisher," gets a commission from every visitor or sale sent to another site. Sites that review books or music, for instance, can make a significant amount of money by hooking up with such programs as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and CD Now, which then benefit from your marketing. And you not only generate income but also provide a service to your readers, who enjoy the convenience of ordering the stuff they read about, right then and there.

Not all affiliate programs are created equal. Some things to look at:

* How does the site track referrals?
* Do you get a commission on just the sales of products you actually list, or on anything the customer buys after entering through your site?
* Are you paid for repeat business that enters directly through the referred site, or only on business that stops to visit you along the way, each time? How satisfied are other affiliates with the program? Are you stuck with an exclusive or can you have more than one vendor? And last, but certainly not least...
* What is the percentage, what minimum sales volume to you have to make in order to get a check, and how often are the checks cut?

There are, of course, other questions you can ask. The important thing is, make sure you understand what you're getting into. At their best, these can boost your product penetration, provide an additional sales channel for your own products, generate enough revenue to actually support the site, etc. But at their worst, you serve as an unpaid publicity agent for another business. A number of sites compare various affiliate and referral programs; do your research before you sign up.

You'll find more on reciprocal marketing in my book, Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring. Preview it at http://www.frugalfun.com/mwmtoc.html. It's 384 pages of useful information to save you money on every imaginable marketing method. To order, phone: 877-FRUGALFUN in the US, 413-586-2388; http://www.frugalfun.com, or by fax at 617-249-0153.

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.


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