Affiliate marketing is a crazy business. One day you are at the top of the world, and the very next day not so much. Like any other business, there are going to be up time and down times. But if you plan for it properly, you can reduce your risks and avoid getting in too deep of a hole. One of the fastest ways to get into trouble in affiliate marketing is by becoming over reliant on an affiliate program. Amazon and eBay both have great affiliate programs, and a lot of newbie marketers tend to start with these programs to start making money online. Once you start making money with these, it’s easy to get carried away and forget about other programs on the market. After all, Amazon and eBay affiliate programs are going to be around forever right? Ask the good affiliates in North Carolina to find out what could go wrong.

If you have built your business around Amazon, eBay, or just a couple of affiliate programs, you are leaving yourself open to unnecessary risk. What happens if the company that are working with goes bankrupt (Circuit City). What if your affiliate manager decided to cut commissions in half? That could easily lead to your business ending up in the red. These days, you never know what could happen. As someone who relied on Advanta affiliate program to make a few dollars online, I am well familiar with the concept of having a rug pulled from under me. But when Advanta went dark with their affiliate program, I wasn’t too worried. I had planned for it, and Advanta was only one of the few programs I was working with and testing offers from.

You should always be involved with more than one affiliate project to make sure if one of your affiliate projects bombs, you have something to fall back on. You can always assume that you can get into any affiliate market fast, and that may well be true. But it’s always better to have things in place rather than having to get started with a new affiliate program from scratch. I have always said that new affiliate marketers need to put focus on only a couple of programs, but you do want to make sure you follow the industry trends and latest developments in your niche to make sure you are not getting into a dead-end market.

Affiliate marketing make look like an art, but it’s a science and it deserves to be treated that way. If you do proper market and trend research, you will always have a plan B when things go awry. And as long as you have backup plans, it’s harder to fail. That could still happen. But you won’t rue bad planning or business management. Plan ahead, hedge your risks, and be agile and good things will happen.

When it comes to promoting products online, we have various types of affiliate programs. We have good affiliate programs that make you a lot of money but leave a lot of work to you. We have great affiliate programs that give you bonuses and take care of you if you perform well. Then we have killer affiliate programs that not only make you a lot of money but provide you with tracking functionality, tools, and content you need to make more money online. Some of these programs even give you money for sending others to their affiliate program. So how can you tell a killer affiliate program from a regular one?

It’s simple really. Once you decide on what niche you want to enter, you should look for affiliate programs that not only perform well but give you the tools you need to optimize your campaigns to make a lot of money. After all, you don’t want to settle for any specific conversion rate, no matter how high it is. You should keep testing and testing until you improve your numbers. And you wouldn’t be able to do that if you can’t track your sales. That’s why you should first focus on affiliate programs that let you enter your conversion rates and track them through Google Adwords or Google Analytics.

Content is also important when dealing with an affiliate program. I am not suggesting that you should grab articles written by your merchant and promote them as yours. But, having pre-written content helps you find new angles and create your own easier. Some merchants provide you with landing pages as well. that’s very useful if you don’t have your own coder and want to go live fast!

Affiliate videos are also very important these days. While video marketing is just taking off, a lot of people still don’t feel comfortable enough to make their own affiliate videos fast. A great affiliate program provides you with video reviews or at least audio clips that you can use to promote your products better.

Finally, a killer affiliate program doesn’t assume that you are a super affiliate already. I have personally learned a lot from affiliate programs that discuss ways that you can promote their products. Not all these methods are viable, but I have found new ways to promote products by reading some of these instructions. Everybody knows about PPC, Ezines, article marketing, and so forth. But those little nuggets here and there makes promoting killer affiliate program worth while.

If I were to start an affiliate program today, I would probably model it after one of these killer programs (e.g. Earth4Energy). Not only you can make more money by providing your affiliates with more tools to promote your products, you can recruit the tops affiliates easier by going beyond what traditional affiliate programs offer.

Your take: what’s your favorite affiliate program?

Many new affiliates have trouble finding products to promote. Believe me, I have been there and done that. When you are trying to find your feet in this business, you hear a lot of things from the gurus that don’t make sense. The problem is, a lot of these gurus have no idea how to convey information to beginners in this industry. A guru may be making millions of dollars from PayDotCom, but that doesn’t mean you can too. For example. a super affiliate who has 500,000 e-mail subscribers and a couple of products of her own can sell high-end products easier. After all, she can always give her own products for free in exchange for folks using her affiliate links to buy those $1997 or more affiliate products. A newbie may be great in SEO and all other technical things, but he/she is still going to struggle to sell those high-end products without a good bonus and a decent plan.

In reality, there are many networks that beginners and intermediate affiliate marketers can use to make money and take their game to the next level. There are many products out there, and as long as you find the right product in the right niche, and you know what you are doing, there is no reason you can’t make things happen. With that in mind, here are 10 networks that can help you get started with affiliate marketing fast:

1. Amazon: Amazon’s Associates Program is still one of the best affiliate marketing programs out there. There is a lot of money to be earned here. And you won’t have trouble making people want to buy from Amazon.
2. eBay Publisher Network: eBay’s affiliate program is another one of those programs that keeps making you money even if you don’t want to. It’s just not that hard.
3. ClickBank: ClickBank is the place to grab digital products and promote them. Who doesn’t like getting 50% or more in commission?
4. LinkShare: LinkShare is a great place to start for newbie affiliates. There are a lot of merchants available. LinkShare folks keep things simple too!
5. PepperJam Network: this network is growing fast, it’s not even funny. You are going to have a lot of fun promoting some of these products.
6. Hydra Network: Hydra Network is a great CPA network that makes it easy to earn money from sign ups and all kinds of actions.
7. Google Network: Google Affiliate Network (Performics) is another great place to get started and make money online.
8. ClixGalore: ClixGalore is another one of those CPA networks that helps you make money online fast!
9. Shareasale: Shareasale is similar to LinkShare and CJ and provides you with lots of advertisers to work with.
10. aZoogleAds: aZoogle Ads is a great place for sign ups and other cool CPA offers. There is a lot of money to be earned here, and these offers can keep you busy for a while.

As you can see, there are many places that you can look to find products to promote online. But you can have the best products at your disposal, but if you don’t promote them right, you are not going to make money. If you are not too advanced in this business, take your time and get the basics down. You don’t want to waste time searching for products when you don’t know how to properly promote them.

Your take: what’s your favorite affiliate network?

I know this is old news, but Amazon has officially reclaimed the title of most innovative affiliate program in the world. As someone who at one time considered working for Amazon, I can tell you that these guys have a vast pool of talent, and they have utilized their talent to the maximum by coming up with new features after new features for Amazon Associates Program.

Amazon is all about providing affiliates with tools to make them succeed. They have thousands of ways that affiliates can link to Amazon products. If you are looking for something simple, you can just grab a banner. If you want to go a bit more advanced, you can grab a widget. There are many widgets to choose from, and depending on real-estate on your website, you can have multiple ways of making money.

Let’s not forget that Amazon is one of the best places to shop, which means you can expect to get a lot of sales if you do your homework. Not only that, Amazon will credit you for any sales that are generated as a part of your effort. So if I put a link to a laptop on my page, and you decide to buy a book, I am going to get credit for it regardless.

Amazon’s affiliate program is one of the oldest affiliate programs on the Web, and it has one of the most generous tiers around. Paying 4% of sales to affiliates may not seem that lucrative, but Amazon does offer performance incentives, which means you can get higher percentages on non-electronic purchases. Amazon is not going to make you a millionaire with their affiliate program, but they provide you with enough tools to make your mortgage payments.

How’s been your experience with Amazon Associates Program? Please share them here.

Perhaps the most important part about getting started with affiliate marketing is finding the right merchants. The whole philosophy behind affiliate marketing is to find products that are excellent in value and the ones that actually sell. I would recommend your chosen product to have both characteristics so you can provide value and earn commissions at the same time.

There are many affiliate networks out there that claim they have the best merchants. There is CJ, LinkShare, Google Affiliate Network, and Clickbank. But in general you want to find merchants that are in your niche and have the best conversion rates. Joining all these networks will allow you to find two or more affiliate networks in almost any niche.

One you know your niche and find the merchant that you would like to work with, you need to start testing. Get a URL redirection script (e.g. Short URL) and convert your affiliate links to shorter trackable links. That way you can figure out how well your clicks are converting. Also, don’t forget to calculate the EPC for your offers. Basically, you want to know how much money you are earning per 100 clicks on average. If you are not earning more than your spending on your clicks, then you either have to tweak your landing page or find a new merchant. Many merchants don’t have optimized sales processes, so you need to identify those and stay away.

Personally, I do forecasting before going with a merchant. Let’s say I want to work with Amazon. I figure out how much they pay (it’s 4%). I figure out the average value of products that I will be selling (e.g. $200). So, I will be getting $8 from Amazon for each and every sale (plus other products that people buy after browsing my offer). Now if I drive 200 clicks to Amazon for $20, with the conversion rate of 1%, I will be looking at $16 on average. So my effective earning per click is -$0.02 per click. Don’t look now but after 5000 clicks you are losing $100! Now of course, if you convert better than that, let’s say 3%, then you are looking at $14 effective EPC or $0.14 per click earning. Multiply that by 5000 and you are looking at $700 profit (before other costs). But you will have this information if you do proper testing. After a few hundred click you will know exactly what your conversion will be and you can even determine the standard deviation that will be acceptable to you.

The moral of story is, don’t go after programs just because they pay you $200 per approval. They maybe 10 times worse in converting than a program that pays you $40 per approval. Always test, provide unique value, and you will be on your way.