Choosing the right Affiliate Program: In-House or Network.

There are several things that factor into my decision to join an affiliate program and market a product. One of those decisions is going with an in-house program or a network program.

Many merchants will have programs on multiple platforms: IE an in-house program running on IDev Affiliate or Post Affiliate Pro and a network based program running with PepperJam, LinkShare, ShareASale, or Commission Junction.

Advantages of in-house programs:

  • The average in-house program will have higher commissions because they are not paying out the fees to networks
  • The linking structure is direct to the merchant
  • Direct relationship with the merchant
  • Most are managed by an OPM or in-house employee
  • 2 Tier earning opportunities
  • Multiple payment options
  • Lower minimum payouts
  • Opportunities for exclusive deals and coupons

 

Advantages of Network Programs

  • Standardized statistics and reporting on clicks, sales
  • Statistics on the merchant in the network like average Earnings Per Click for affiliates as well as information on each banner’s performance.
  • Access to feeds and instant shop building tools/widgets
  • The merchant must keep a certain amount prepaid in escrow to ensure affiliates and network fees are paid.
  • Alerts on low balance Merchants or suspensions
  • Payments are consistent

Before making a decision on which platform to join, it is important you do two things:

  1. Carefully read the affiliate agreement
  2. Contact with the person in charge of the affiliate program.

Make sure all of these questions are answered:

  • When do they make payments?
  • What is the minimum Payout?
  • How are payments made?
  • How many customer return days (Tracking Cookie Life)?
  • Are there any PPC or SEO restrictions?
  • What is the refund policy?

 

10 ways to Generate Traffic

Article Marketing- writing and distributing articles to the directories. Article marketing is not dead, while less emphasis is put on the links back being of SEO value, articles still have value as a way to make yourself the expert in a niche and drive targeted traffic to your site.

Social Bookmarking – Posting links in Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon and various other networks.

SEO  Traffic.- Target long tail keywords and write content for your site the is highly relevant. And geared toward the user not the Search Engines. It is the User that you want to come back to your site , so it is important you write content for them.

Pay Per Click or PPC Traffic – With the advances in PPC traffic you can segregate your campaigns by geo targeting as well as age and groups of interest. Narrowly target your best demographic for best performance of your campaigns.

Blog Commenting –  Post comments on another bloggers sites. Make them relevant to the blog post and don’t just write canned comments. This also can give you free links back to your site from higher PR sites.

Guest Blogging– write articles for other blogs in your niche

Forums – Place your links in your signature file and participate in forums specific to your topic or niche. There are some forums that have paid announcements for as little as $25. These types of announcements get lots of views and more importantly get traffic .

Press Releases – Doing a press release about a new product or service on your site is one way to generate large amounts of back links and traffic .  You can use a Paid service or Free service to distribute your Press Release

Video Marketing – Use channels like YouTube to create a “what is in the box” or “how to” short video. If you don’t want to be on camera do a how to or guide videos using a slide show presentation and screen recording software like Camtasia.

Groups Marketing– Similar to forums there are groups, which exist on FaceBook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Google Groups. The groups is notified via email when a new post is made and commented on. The nice part about Groups is they are highly targeted and active internet users. Join Groups in your niche and respond to posts as well as contribute to the groups in a meaningful way. Do not just post links with offers in the groups, it will get you banned.