Posts
BloggingPinay - How to know if an affiliate program is good
This article addresses what to avoid when looking at opportunities to make money online.
The wide variety and flexibility of money making opportunities available online means that there is no concrete list of attributes that a program should or should not have. This makes it extremely difficult for inexperienced entrepreneurs to make heads or tails of all the programs out there.
How can you be sure that you are not spending months of your life building a downline on a program that will close over the next year? Unfortunately, there are too many variables for someone to be 100% sure that a business will stand the test of time, but there are certain clues that will increase their chances of being right.
Here are things to look for (and watch out for!) In some of the top online opportunity categories to help you identify which businesses are most likely to be successful.
Resale / Shipment of products
The first thing to examine is the product. Does this product satisfy a need that more than a few isolated people have? Is the price of the product reasonable (even for someone who does not participate in the program)? Would you buy the product if you weren't on the show? If the answers to these questions are not satisfactory, the business will not last long. Move on.
The second thing to examine is the compensation plan. How likely is it that I will earn money from this program? Is the program structured so that most people can make several hundred to several thousand dollars a month, or is it set up so that a few heavy hitters make absurd amounts of money that the company can use on their own? Marketing literature while members with fewer than several? Thousands of referrals in your downline struggle to break even? If breakeven is not possible by completing the first level or two of the program, most people who join the program will lose money.
Traffic generation
There are two successful approaches to generating traffic. The first is to win the numbers games. By that I mean if you get a ridiculously large number of random people to visit your site, chances are that at least some of them are interested in what you have to offer. Visitors who are interested may be a small fraction of your total, but if it attracts enough traffic, a small percentage can mean quite a few bites. Good examples of these programs will allow you unlimited downlines for multiple levels. Programs must be free (or it will take more effort than it's worth getting people to join). The program's website should be very professional and compelling, as this site will close the deal when potential referrals click on your link.
The second approach to generating traffic is targeting. Targeting traffic is the practice of looking for the people who are most likely to be interested in your offering. If you have a hardware site, you are trying to get contractors and maintenance personnel to visit. Rather than focus on a large number of visitors, look for the select group that is most likely to be interested in your site. The value of these programs largely depends on their categories. These programs will segment your traffic into different categories. The visitors you receive are directed to your site by the program because they are interested in whatever category you choose for your program. So if there is a category that very accurately describes your area, you will get better results. If you have an investment banking website, then you will want to find a program that brings you traffic in the Investment banking category. Not so good would be a Finance category. If the traffic sent to you is in the Business category, you are still improving than the undirected traffic, but not by much.
Note: Many traffic generation programs will use a combination of the two previous approaches.
Paid email / browsing
A good paid email / browsing program is one that actually sends payments. These companies get their money (part of which is passed on to you) from advertisers. Some programs have difficulty collecting payments from their advertisers. As a result, they have no money to pay members who spend their free time reading advertisements for vitamins and discounted vacations.
The question then is how do you know that a program can collect information from advertisers. The simplest indicator is usually time. How long has the program been around? Another good indication is the quality of your offerings. If the oYour advertisers' feeds are at least moderately interesting, the more likely some of the people who see these offers are signing up. Advertisers are sure to pay (and keep paying) for marketing methods that get results.
Internet marketing
If you want to create an internet scam, impersonating an internet marketing program is one of the easiest ways to do it. Even in legitimate marketing programs, the product being sold is information. Inherent in selling information is the fact that no one can verify the product until you've paid for it, however that doesn't mean you can't verify the company.
Newsgroups are full of stories of people who have been scammed. Do a search on the name of the program and you will quickly find out how many people have been burned. With that said, you need to realize that even the best shows will have some negative comments on newsgroups. There are always people who signed up for a program and just waited for the cash to start rolling in instead of struggling to generate income. When these sloths didn't magically get rich, they decided to yell from the rooftops (or message boards) that their show was full of empty promises. Make sure you read the posts and get an idea of how much effort the poster really put into making the program work. You can get a better picture of the quality of the program by searching for posts in different places
