In the previous post, you learned about affiliate marketing and how to find a suitable industry. Within distinct segments in the market, there are countless advertisers, products/services, and those advertisers offer several affiliate programs with varied commission incentives.
However, not all of these are appropriate for you. Before joining any affiliate program, there’re many criteria to consider to be successful in affiliate marketing.
In this article, we will keep you informed about affiliate marketing programs as newcomers, and how to pick up the most suitable one for you.
Let’s get started!
1. What’s an affiliate program?
Affiliate programs are commission-based initiatives in which a business promises to pay you for particular outcomes of your customers such as leads, clicks, or purchases.
The most successful and equitable commission structure is pay-per-sale. Since merchants receive sales, you will receive a commission when clients purchase through the affiliate link.
2. Criteria before joining any affiliate program
Product
- Product need
It is critical to determine whether the product matches a special need, demand, or interest of your customers you wish to promote before selecting it.
It’s a folly to let the pleasure of huge commissions and a high conversion rate cloud your vision. Remember that your ultimate goal is to solve your clients’ issues so that refer items helpful for your customers.
Also, make sure that the merchandise you’re going to sell is evergreen, one tip to pick up the suitable one is to check whether these items were relevant last year, and are trendy this year.
Examples of evergreen products are sports gear, beauty/makeup items, products for hobbies, clothing, fashion. And some seasonal products you should avoid if you expect steady sales revenue such as products related to Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
So if you can find and select an affiliate program that caters to the needs of a worldwide market, you can be confident of increased sales and success.
Another crucial element to consider is the relevance of the product to your niche, which is essential to your affiliate marketing success.
For example, If you have a website in the health niche, pick affiliate products relevant to health, such as herbal goods. Avoid affiliate programs that are irrelevant to your niche, such as vehicle insurance programs.
- Product’s quality
It goes without saying that the product’s quality must be good and you don’t want to end up selling products with poor quality. Since the greatest approach to achieve long-term affiliate success is to make your consumers happy, excellent items are a big part of a good quality product.
To avoid such scenarios, you should check some relevant Forums and Websites that have reviews of the items, where you may get valuable information to help you make a decision for whether or not to join the program.
If the niche is too narrow or there are no reviews about the products yet, you can check the products’ authenticity by the proven tracking records.
- Product’s price
Don’t choose the price alone.
It also depends on the commission rate too.
Like you’re referring to, an item costing 300$ with 2$ commission offer compared to another item with a price of 100$ with a 10% commission rate. So it’s a good idea to pick the product paying more.
Advertiser/ Merchant
- Brand
Effective publishers like you understand that partnering with the right advertisers could contribute to a win-win collaboration for the two parties.
Decide whether you’ll work with well-known brands, lesser-known brands, or a mix of both. Determine which merchants and promotions complement your website the best. You can start to try then make up your mind later.
Moreover, you probably do not want to collaborate with dishonest brands or brands with fake products. There’re many advertisers in the pool, make sure to pick up the one that has some of these criteria:
- Good reputation
- Positive reviews on website or review sites
- Dedicated customer services
- Professionalism
You probably don’t expect to work with merchants with a non-professional website since it’s not tempting for customers to urge their “add-to-cart” action.
That’s why firstly, you should take a look at the advertiser’s website you intend to work with and ask yourself these questions: Is it simple to comprehend his business operations? Are you able to locate what you’re looking for? Would you make a purchase from them?
- Affiliate support and promotional tools
The merchants understand the importance of providing promotional tools for their affiliates for a better referral.
That’s why you should ask your advertisers if they provide you with banner advertisements, creatives, email templates, client testimonials, demographic data, and so on.
So that you can improve their marketing efforts by having quick access to such tools and learning materials.
In UpPromote Creatives, you can easily get access to your merchant’s promotional gadget. You can view, copy and download or get the HTML code (images) to share those media assets with your audience.
Affiliate program
- Commission offer
The amount of commission given is perhaps the most important factor when selecting an affiliate program. As I mentioned before, the commission rate varies according to the product you’re selling.
It depends on the niche market too, here’s an average commission rate of various industries in UpPromote Marketplace. You can compare the average commission in this table to your advertisers’ average commission.
Many new affiliates believe that higher commission levels offer better opportunities, however, it’s crucial to consider the broader picture. Sometimes, high commissions may be provided on low-selling items, while low commissions may be offered on higher-selling ones.
Moreover, higher price products with low commission rates seem better than low price products with higher commissions.
For example, which would you select if you had to choose between workout equipment costing $1,000 and a 5% commission rate and a nutrition product costing $50 and a 15% commission rate?
To cater to a wide range of customers, you can sell both low-cost and high-cost items if you are open to a variety of items and pricing.
>> You may like: Hot affiliate offers on UpPromote Marketplace this November
- Cookie length
Cookie time is in which you’re eligible to get commissions for a consumer you’ve referred. An average good cookie time length is 30 days. If the cookie life is set to 24 hours and the recommended consumer purchases in the next two days, you will not be paid a commission.
In this situation, even if you introduced the consumer, you may miss out on possible money.
The longer the cookie life, the higher the profit margin.
- Payment
Payment methods
Do their payment methods match yours? Whether they cover bank accounts or any worldwide payment mechanism like PayPal. Most merchants offer automatic payment through PayPal so I suggest you have a PayPal account.
Payment time
How often do you get paid? It depends on every merchant’s option. Maybe you’ll get paid every month, every week, or even right after your customers purchase through the affiliate link.
If this is not listed in their terms and conditions, you can ask him/her beforehand to avoid unneeded confusion.
- Terms and conditions
Are the terms and conditions agreeable for you?
When you join a program, it is subject to a set of policies, procedures, and conditions that you must follow. Certain programs, for example, impose restrictions on generating sales through specified traffic channels. Being exclusively reliant on that forbidden channel while unaware of the limitation will simply stifle your earnings.
- Good tracking system
When you work with effective tracking systems created for affiliates, you know you’ve connected with a good affiliate program.
With this helpful tool, you can keep track of your successful referral orders, payment, the in-depth performance of your traffic channels, as well as the increase and fall in referral sales.
Knowing your campaign’s fundamental performance might help you focus your efforts in the appropriate way for the best results.
UpPromote offers all the useful all-in-one app features. In your Dashboard, you can find your referral link, coupon code, and your performance. Moreover, you can approach the collection of media assets that the merchant provides to help you promote the shop better.
Join our UpPromote Marketplace merchant’s system, filter your industry niche and join. All of the UpPromote features will lie in your hand.
Wrapping up
We hope you find this guide useful and allows you to make an informed decision and choose affiliate program appropriately as an affiliate. We also think that after reading this article, you will feel a lot more at ease and that most of your doubts and concerns will get answered.
