Affiliate Marketing FAQ

What follows are some frequently asked questions about Affiliate Marketing. Please be cautioned, however, that this is no substitute for your own "due diligence" in investigating any affiliate program before you join.

While most affiliate programs are quite similar, each has its own individual features that you will learn about if you read the affiliate agreement for each individual affiliate program before you sign up.

Are Affiliate Marketing and Network Marketing the same thing?

Affiliate Marketing and Network Marketing, or MLM, have certain similarities, but are not identical. Most of the questions and answers here would also apply to online Network or MLM Marketing, which in many cases has aspects of Affiliate Marketing built in to it, at least to the extent that you earn sales commissions by promoting the product or products of the parent company.

The main difference, of course, is that Network Marketing requires you to recruit and supervise your own "downline" of sub-affiliates, which traditional Affiliate Programs do not require of you.

Also, Network Marketing (or MLM or Multi-Level Marketing) places much more emphasis on the members actually directly selling the product, as opposed to Affiliate Programs, which simply want the Affiliate to drive traffic to the program's sales site through an affiliate link.

Further, many Network Marketing programs put pressure, if not outright requirements, on their members to purchase and use the products themselves. I know more than a few people who have gotten into MLM only to find themselves a big customer rather than a happy "distributor".

Last, Network or MLM Marketing has traditionally been done in the "offline" world, where it has a bad name in some circles, in part because many Network Marketers tend to inundate their family and friends with endless recruitment efforts, and in part because some purported MLM offerings were little more than "pyramid schemes", where members were paid a fee to enroll new members, but there was no real product for the members to sell, other than a membership itself.

As you may know, pyramid schemes eventually collapse when the members run out of new members to recruit, which is why they are illegal. An Affiliate Marketing program, or a legitimate MLM opportunity, survives because the program involves selling one or more tangible products and there is no fee paid to members simply for recruiting other members.

Can anyone do affiliate marketing?

In a word ... YES! Personally, I consider affiliate marketing the best internet business idea for those who are just getting going and want to start internet business. As an affiliate, you do not need to have your own products to sell, do not need to worry about the selling itself, and have no worries about credit card processing, order fulfillment, answering email, or dealing with the occasional unhappy customer.

As an affiliate, all you have to do is market the product ... what better way to learn internet marketing?

All you really need to succeed is *motivation*, and a willingness to put in some work. Many of the people who are now top internet marketers came to it with little apparent relevant skill. They just rolled up their sleeves and learned. One very high profile affiliate marketer was an air traffic controller before she quit and went into online business. Another was a truck driver, and still a third says he was working at a minimum wage job before he took up internet marketing.

How easy is it to make money online with affiliate programs?

Affiliate marketing is NOT intended as a "get rich quick" scheme, and it does require effort on your part if you are going to make any money at it. Simply signing up for a few affiliate programs will do you NO good, unless you make the effort to publicize the product you are affiliated with, and do so in such a way that people visit the vendor's web site using your unique affiliate link. You can develop your own mini-sites to "pre-sell" the products that you represent, or you can join traffic programs to promote your affiliate URL, or you can introduce people to the products you represent through your personal emails and/or business cards or flyers. Another widely used technique is to run ads on the "pay-per-click" search engines.

What will this cost me?

Anywhere from zero to several hundred, or even several thousand dollars, depending on how you decide to go about it. Affiliate programs are free to join. Personally I would NOT join one that charged any sort of fees to its affiliates. But after you join for free, you may incur some costs to advertise whatever it is you're trying to promote as an affiliate.

If you already have a web site, it costs you nothing but a little time to put a few strategically placed links or banners on it. If you want to develop a website, it CAN be done with free hosting and by using the HTML editor built into most browsers, so you're still at zero cost.

If you want to buy what you need, you can get a good editor and a couple of utility programs, buy a couple of ebooks to help yourself out, and buy a domain name, and probably keep the cost under a few hundred dollars in total. At that point, however, you still have to think about the cost of advertising whatever product it is that you represent.

Even if you chose to go what I consider the "deluxe" route, including a full-featured editor, website optimization software, link cloaker, and purchasing some online advertising and/or "pay per click" traffic, the total cost should still be well under a thousand dollars. From there on, your main costs are likely to be monthly web site hosting and/or advertising.

I can't think of another business that can be started so inexpensively and actually have a chance of success. In spite of the low cost, though, you have to watch your expenses, and above all, do not risk more on any business, online or offline, than you can comfortably afford to lose. Not everybody succeeds. It is a fact of life.

Keep in mind, also, that there are methods of advertising and of attracting traffic to a website that can be done at little or very low cost ... as long as you have the time to implement them. One way or another, you'll have expenses, in time, or money, or both.

What exactly does it take to succeed?

Motivation, desire, and a willingness to learn and follow through. Experts say that as many as 80% of the people signing up for affiliate programs never even bother to post a link to the vendor's web site, and most of the commission money is paid out to at most about 10% of the members of the affiliate program. The top earners are often referred to as "Super Affiliates", and in most programs, they only represent a couple of percent of all affiliates. These are people who had the patience to develop their business, and the motivation to keep trying different things until they found their niche.

You need to find a way to get targeted traffic to the sites of the vendors you are affiliated with. Targeted traffic means people who want to see what the vendor has to offer. Putting up a link on a banner exchange, or buying a list of email addresses is all but pointless, since the traffic (if any) you'd get from those sources is "generic" ... it's just clicks on the page. What you want is to advertise your affiliate URL to people who would have a genuine interest in the product you are promoting. You don't have to *sell* the product, but you do have to *pre-sell* it, meaning you have to get people interested enough to click the link. From that point on, if you've picked a good program to affiliate with, the vendor will do the selling for you.

Can I lose money doing this?

Absolutely! As with any business, there is no guarantee whatsoever that you'll turn a profit, or even make any sales. My advice? Take it slowly, learn as you go, and be patient, but don't invest more than you can afford to lose. And if anybody promises you an overnight fortune or a plan to make money without any effort ... don't believe it!

How long will it take? Can I make money right away?

How long it takes before you see some income depends in large part on how well you go about the task of getting traffic, and whether you already have an existing web site and mailing list. It also depends, of course, on how much time and money you have available to invest in your business, the demand for the products you choose to promote, and your ability to "pre-sell" the products you are promoting.

Affiliate managers say that many affiliates give up too quickly. Those who have succeeded in any business will tell you that it took them several months, at least, before the revenues started to be significant, even though many of them were turning at least a small profit within their first few months in business. Others have needed a year or more before their income became significant.

Obviously, the higher your costs, and the less time you devote to the business, the longer it will take to become profitable, and you have to be willing to take the risk that you will be one of those who, unfortunately, do not succeed.

You have to remember that internet marketing is a "numbers game", meaning that only a small percentage of your site visitors will actually buy your product, often only after repeated exposure to it, so your goal is to expose a large number of people to your marketing efforts over time. If you can develop a mailing list from your site visitors, you gain another chance to expose them again to the product later on. Many experienced internet marketing experts say that building a mailing list is critical to your success, yet others have found ways to succeed without the benefit of a large mailing list, or any mailing list at all.

How am I paid?

This is one of the places where you really need to read the "fine print" of the individual affiliate agreements when you sign up. Commissions vary widely, from as high as 50% or more, to as little as 1%. Most vendors pay only on direct referrals, but some programs are "two-tiered", meaning that you get paid not only for purchases by people you directly referred, but also on referrals by anyone who joins the affiliate program after having been referred by you. Some programs pay their affiliates monthly, while others will hold your commissions until they reach a minimum dollar amount (typically around $100). The method of payment varies. Most vendors send you a check by mail, but some programs pay their affiliates through the online payment portals such as PayPal.

What should I look for in an affiliate program?

First of all, you need to find a product that you, yourself are interested in, and willing to endorse. If you can't get excited about it, how can you expect to excite potential customers? It's also a good idea to buy and try the product yourself, so you can write a personal endorsement, although that is not essential.

Second, you need to deal only with high-quality companies that have a solid reputation for paying their affiliates. Horror stories abound about companies that use every trick in the book to short change their affiliates. Fortunately, these are relatively few in number, and you can avoid much of this hassle by sticking to high profile companies, and vendors whose affiliate program is managed by a reputable, independent third party, such as Click Bank or Commission Junction.

Most importantly, you need to find a product that is in demand. Perhaps it has little competition, or appeals to a specialized group of people, or has appeal to a wide audience. In any case, demand is essential, since only a very small percentage of the people you refer to a given vendor will actually buy the product. This figure, of course, varies widely, but from what I've seen, most vendors seem to think they are doing well if they "convert" something like 1% to 5% of their prospects. If you can find a product with higher conversion ratios, or find a unique approach to increase conversions, you're that much better off.

Since it often takes several exposures to a product before the potential customer buys, you also want to find vendors who track affiliate referrals carefully. Some vendors are now trying to implement systems to permanently track the original referral source of all customers, but more commonly they just use a "cookie" to track a visitor. If your cookie expires in only a week or two, odds are you'll lose credit for the sale, so you want vendors whose cookies have a long shelf life.

Finally, you need to look for products that are unique and new, or at least find a unique way to present the product. On the latter point, I can think of at least one internet marketer who prides himself on his sales pitch, and claims to have sold hundreds of copies of e-books that are given away for free on other web sites. Obviously, you'll have a better chance of generating those sales commissions on products that aren't already "tired", but a unique approach can also breathe new life into some products.

What is the best way to get started?

Personally, I really think it pays to join at least one affiliate program that really "mentors" its affiliates, even if your only purpose is to learn the ropes.

My two personal favorite programs for this purpose are The 5 Pillars Affiliate Program and/or the very popular Strong Future International Affiliate Program.

Both are free to join, and provide tons of information and guidance to their affiliates, as well as offering some very desireable and inexpensive products that you can market as an affiliate.

Then you need to decide on a marketing strategy. I'd be inclined to start by joining only one or two programs, and feature a limited number of products.

Some people choose to promote affiliate programs entirely using "offline" methods, such as business cards or flyers that encourage people to visit their affiliate URL at the vendor's site. Others just stick a "signature" line in their emails to family and friends, suggesting a visit to the site by way of the affiliate URL. Personally, I don't think either of these methods would be particularly effective, but I know some people do it that way.

Online marketing can be accomplished either through putting links on an existing site, or by creating your own doorway to the affiliate program using a "mini-site" that "pre-sells" the program. If you already have a web site, pick products which will complement the theme of your site.

If you're starting from scratch, you might want to start affiliate marketing with a mini-site (i.e., a one to three page site) that "pre-sells" the products you are affiliated with. In the process, you can learn search engine optimization and linking strategies, at which point you can broaden your horizon to include more products, or entirely different types of products, or develop a larger site that showcases a larger number of products.

Another way of going about affiliate marketing is to develop a larger "content site" that essentially gives away a lot of free information, and weaves your affiliate links into the context of the site. To use this approach effectively, you ideally want to choose to develop a site about something you're already interested in and passionate about, and then use that site to promote your affiliate links.

While developing a large content site sounds difficult, it can be made fairly simple. Several online services lead you step by step through the process of developing a content-based or informational web site (no knowledge of programming or HTML required!), host it for you, and lead you through the process of getting traffic. If you're intending to develop your own internet business, they even have built-in e-commerce modules, and the ability to publish and distribute your own e-mail newsletter.

There's also an interesting approach that is done by using "pay-per-click" advertising, even if you don't have your own web site. With this approach, you place ads on the large PPC search engines, and the URL listed in the ad is actually your affiliate URL. Learn more about marketing with PPCs.

Any other suggestions?

If you're serious about this, get started today. Join an affiliate program and subscribe to their newsletter. Visit their affiliate resource center and see how things work. Invest some time in educating yourself, by visiting various sites and making some notes about what makes some sites and products more appealing than others. Especially when starting out, choose something that will capture and retain your interest and passion. Come back and read every page on my site. I try very hard to feature only the best, and continue to add material and links. If you like what you learned here, subscribe to my mailing list, and I'll keep you informed as I find new opportunities, plus you'll be notified as I post new issues to my internet marketing newsletter