How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing Programs

By: Skip McGrath

1. Don't confuse affiliate programs with multi-level marketing programs. There are a couple of good affiliate programs that require you to spend money to join, but most do not. If you have to purchase product or recruit others to spend money to join the program, then this is not an affiliate program --it is a multi-level marketing program masquerading as one.
    
2.  Pick an affiliate program that has something to do with your business. For example, if you sell ladies clothing on eBay you would not want to recommend products that would be of interest to women.
    
3. The best programs have two tiers. The first tier is where you get paid for sales that you refer people to. The second tier is where you get paid (a smaller amount) if someone signs up as an affiliate under you and they refer a sale. For example, in my program if you sell one of my books you earn 40%. If someone signs up as an affiliate under you and they refer the sale of one of my book, then you earn 10% of that sale.
    
4. Be wary of affiliate programs that have more than two tiers. There are a couple of good affiliate programs that have three tiers but they are rare. Whenever I see a program with three or more tiers I am very hesitant to join. Why? If they are paying out more than 50% commissions that means what the customer is getting can't be that good. As I said, there are exceptions to this but they are rare.
    
5. Look for affiliate programs that have lots of marketing tools such as pre-written emails, free articles, e-books you can give away and several banner designs. The more tools an affiliate program has, the more likely you will find one that will work in your market.
    
6. Always buy one of the products and evaluate it yourself before recommending it to others. Some affiliate programs out there are pretty crappy, while others are no more than information scams. When you recommend a product or a program, your reputation is on the line. You don't want people coming back to you complaining about something you recommend.
    
7. Always double check your affiliate links. I see broken affiliate links all the time. When this happens the customer is usually directed to the web site but you don't get your commission and the affiliate program owner usually has no way to determine who should get credit for the sale.
    
8. If you sell on eBay one of the easiest ways to make affiliate commissions is from your About Me Page. My friend, Jim Cockrum, wrote one of the best books on the subject of using your eBay traffic to generate affiliate income while still obeying all of eBay’s rules. The book is called, The Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay and has sold over 80,000 copies.

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs available today. Here are some Affiliate Programs I recommend:

	Worldwide Brands One Source is without a doubt the best source of wholesale information on the web. They also run an excellent affiliate program that you can access once you purchase the product. It pays $65 per sale, so you only need to sell a few to get all of your money back. This is a great program to promote from your eBay About Me page.
	Seller's Voice is a new program that puts audio into your eBay auctions. Once you sign up for a $1 trial membership, you can join their affiliate program. Here is what's really cool. You can earn money from people who look at, and don't even bid on your eBay auctions. First put the audio on your auctions. It's very easy and quick to do --you can use the telephone so you don't even need a mike or sound card in your computer --and there is no software to download. When someone looks at your auction they here the audio. If they click on the player button, they can link to your affiliate page. Also, you can put a audio message at the end of your recording that says: "Thank you for looking at my auction. If you would like to learn how my voice is coming to you, please click on my About Me Page. Then on your about me page you explain what Seller's Voice is and give the link to your affiliate page. You earn $9 a month for life as long as the person is a member. I have signed up 57 members this way and am now earning over $500 a month --every month, for about 10 minutes work.
	High Performance Affiliate Marketing is simply the best book on the subject of affiliate marketing. If you want to do affiliate marketing you should purchase it. Then once you purchase, you will get access to their affiliate program where you can make money referring this great program to others. This book has one of the highest conversion rates of any product you will come across making it easy to earn referral commissions.
	Kolimbo Affiliate Network is a very interesting company. They are an affiliate aggregator. Basically they drive so much traffic to affiliate site owners that they can command higher commissions and they pass these commissions on to you. The neat thing about Kolimbo is that they have affiliate offers in dozens of categories. So no matter what your niche is you can find an affiliate offer that will relate to it.
	And of course there is the Skip McGrath Affiliate Program. To learn more about this program please contact us.

I wish you luck with whatever affiliate program you choose to work with. But remember --it is not enough just to sign up for a program, you actually have to promote it to make money.

Skip McGrath