Should you become an affiliate?

If you have a website, you may want to consider becoming an affiliate as a source of income. There are thousands of available affiliate programs that you can join. The opportunity to make money is expanding rapidly, too. According to Forrester Research and Jupiter, more than 20 percent of all Internet revenues in 2003 will result from affiliate selling and they estimate 54 percent of Internet marketing dollars will be spent on performance marketing.

If you're tight on money, there are definite advantages to becoming an affiliate website. You do not have to buy or stock product, you have no inventory costs and you are not responsible for shipping and delivery. However, the commission paid by the companies you affiliate with may range widely. You'll need to be careful in determining whether the product is a good fit for your site, the quality of the product and delivery experience and what their payment policy is.

Once you've determined which programs are potential matches for your site, evaluate them carefully for suitability and fairness. If you decide to become an affiliate, you have some decisions to make. Are you going to wait and see what commissions show up? Or are you going to work it as a business?

Both decisions are valid, but you'll get much higher rewards by becoming a "super affiliate." In any marketing situation, a rule of thumb is that 20% of the sellers get 80% of the sales. It's even more extreme in affiliate marketing. Estimates I've seen state that 2% of the sellers get 98% of the rewards. How do you become a super affiliate? Understand that the visitors to your site are your visitors and that you've got to deliver information that they want to keep them as customers. You've got to offer something that's more interesting than simply a collection of affiliate sites they can visit from yours.

Update your information frequently to encourage them to bookmark it and visit again and again. How do you make your website compelling for your visitors? Know who they are and what they're looking for on your site. The best way to do this is to ask them, so a short optional survey is always in order. It's not necessarily wise to go broad and try to bring in everyone. Instead, go deep and make your site intensely interesting to the visitors you most want to attract.

Next, get information on what areas of your site they find most interesting. We use a free monitoring package from Hitbox ( http://www.hitbox.com/ ) to see what the visitors to our site find most interesting. If you're really interested in your statistics, though, you'll probably want to buy a more extended package or work directly from your site logs. At least once a month, go through your logs to find out what areas are most frequently visited and where you typically lose your visitors.

In order to become a super affiliate, you need to take care of your visitors. When you offer a product, you should be just as convinced of its value to your customers as you'd be if you actually were buying inventory and shipping it to them with your name, not Amazon's or someone else's, on the package. Does the product fit needs or wants you know your customers have? Does the pricing offer value to your customers? Does the company running the affiliate program have a good reputation for prompt shipping, accurate billing, standing behind their product? Is it easy to return something? You may not be able to find the answers to all of these questions, but you should remain alert because if the company you're affiliated with behaves badly, some of that dirt is going to rub off on your site.

Check the site to which you will be referring your visitors. Would you buy their products? Do you think anyone would? If the site doesn't do a great job of selling, you'll get minimal commissions even though you've delivered the traffic. Always read your affiliate agreement thoroughly before signing it. There is often a discrepancy between the "copy" written about an affiliate agreement and the actual legal agreement itself. In all cases, the legal agreement governs the relationship. Pay particular attention to the methods that the company uses to track referrals from your site and how deep into the other site your customers can go before you lose part or all of the commission.

Speaking of commission: How much will you actually get? Amazon, for example, promises a hefty 15% commission, but that's only paid on the direct links you've referred. If your customer then purchases something else, your commission on that sale will drop to 5%. How will the site you're referring your customers to treat your customers? Do they immediately ask for a lot of detailed information without providing a benefit? Do they have a good privacy policy? Would you be comfortable being referred to them from another site you're visiting?

If things look good, I suggest one additional step before joining. Check out attorney Glenn Sobel's excellent Affiliate Advisor site, http://www.affiliateadvisor.com/ProgramHome.htm. He has reviewed a number of affiliate programs and the site contains his recommendations on good affiliates and those to avoid. It's worth checking his site to make sure that you haven't missed any critical information buried in the legal agreement.

-Cindy Nemeth-Johannes

We recommend that you check out LinkShare. They have an easy way of sorting through potential affiliate programs so that you can find businesses that complement your website.