by 5starAffiliatePrograms » Sun Apr 16, 2006 12:16 pm
Hi Blindi, Lynn and all,
Blindi, glad to see you are doing well with Affiliate Classroom. They have been one of my clients for several months and run a nice high integrity program.
I'm sure Blindi realizes that like others here have said - what works well for one person or site may not work well for another.
I mod several large affiliate forums, including my own. One question that consistantly comes up is:
"What is the best affiliate program or how do I find the best affiliate program?"
1) What is your current site about and who are your visitors? What are they interested in? Find products and services that will appeal to them and THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX! For instance if you have a site about travel, don't just promote hotel and airline affiliate programs, add travel insurance, Amazon books about travel and Luggage.
2) What are you passionate about??? What do you know a lot about? If you can find an affiliate program that ties into your interests or hobbies you will be ahead of the game!!! WHY? Because it can take some time to generate income and if it's something you are interested in it will give you the incentive to keep building more pages PLUS you can add valuable content to your site based on your knowledge of the subject.
3) Make a list of all the potential products and services that you think may be a good fit for either your existing site or a new niche site based on #2. Then go to Commission Junction or ShareaSale or one of the affiliate directories like Refer-it, 5 Star or AffiliateTip and find several programs then compare the following:
Things to consider before joining an affiliate program.
1) The honesty & integrity of the program. Are they parasite-free, do they have affiliate-centered management, good record of paying on time? *This can be hard to figure out unless you search on Affiliate Forums.
2) Are there any commission leaks like 800 #s or banner ads that leak your traffic elsewhere without getting compensated?
3) Nice long cookies?
4) Is the merchant site designed for optimum conversion rates?
Now to answer the question “What is the best affiliate program?” Well it depends, and as you can see there is no easy answer, but I hope I have given you some guidelines and tips to ponder. If you would like to see some of the high paying, high integrity affiliate programs that I have chosen to consult for and tie my good reputation to, check out my 5 Star Affiliate Programs and see if any of them are a good fit for you.
