Prune by Eliminating High-Risk Programs
Find the good programs and eliminate the dogs by considering the following plus signs, minus signs, and red flags. Let’s start with the plus signs, signified by + (which means “good things to look for”). Here they are, in the approximate order of importance...
+ High quality product or service - Remember, it’s your reputation that is on the line (and online!). Don’t recommend products that UNDERdeliver.
+ Merchant has a good site that sells effectively.
+ Ability for affiliate to link straight to individual products, rather than just to the home page. (If the visitor has to find the product that you recommend, your Conversion Rate plummets.)
+ Type of payment model... Pay-per-sale and pay-per-lead are good. This is true “performance marketing.” If your referred visitor delivers the desired response, you get paid. What about “pay-per-click?” See red flags below.
+ Affiliate Support...
• Accurate, reliable, real-time, online accounting, preferably with some kind of ability to “audit” by spot-checking
• Detailed traffic and linking stats
• Notification by e-mail when a sale is made
• Useful marketing assistance -- provides traffic-building and sales-getting tools
• Quality newsletter that educates, trains, and provides accounting
• Professional marketing materials available
• Affiliates receive discount on products
Great affiliate support is important for a “between the lines” reason, too. It indicates a high degree of commitment to the program and its affiliates.
+ Pays good commission - Hard goods have lower margins than digital ones so their commissions will be lower. Still, you should make at least 10% (hard goods) or 20% (digital goods) on any product that you recommend. Don’t be scared off by low-priced products if they offer a good % commission -- the lower dollar value per sale is offset by the higher sales volume.
+ Must be free (no charge) to join, no need to buy the product.
+ Lifetime commission -- If the program pays a commission on future sales of other products to customers that you refer, this is a huge plus.
+ Two-tier commission - If the program pays a commission on affiliates who join because of you, this is also great.
+ Lifetime cookie - Do you receive a commission
if the person you referred returns and buys within one month? Three months? The cookie that tracks this should not expire.
+ Restriction on number of affiliates - You won’t find many of these. But if you do find one, grab it.
+ Monthly payment, with reasonable minimum.
Do all those plus signs have to be present? No. But the more, the merrier.
Minus signs are definite detractors. Naturally, if you are unable to give a + to any of the criteria listed just above, consider its absence to be a minus. And watch out for these negative factors...
— Slow and/or poor support.
— Unethical conduct of any kind.
— Reports of late (or lack of) payments.
— Allowing spam, or seeming to send spam themselves.
— Defective affiliate-joining process. Hey, if they can’t get this right...
— Clauses in the agreement that you find unacceptable.
• Example - If lifetime customers are important to you, then a clause that allows unilateral termination or modification of the agreement at any time by the company without just cause effectively makes the lifetime commitment of no value.
• Example - No exclusivity (i.e., you should be allowed to represent more than one book vendor).
And perhaps the most worrisome factor of all…
— “The dark side” of affiliate programs. Is the program really just a way to legally bribe folks to recommend overpriced, UNDERdelivering products in order to collect excessive commissions?
There is a commission that is “just right” for each product. If the commission is too low, it is not interesting enough for affiliates. If it is too high, it’s a consumer rip-off. (Excessive commissions also push the price of the product up to levels that cannot survive for long in the competitive Net marketplace.)
Your job as an affiliate is an important one. You deliver high-value content that gains the confidence and trust of your visitor/reader. You include recommendations and referrals to your new friends as part of your service and content. Recommending anything less than sterling products is simply sophisticated, subtle fraud.
If you find products that fit your theme but that don’t deliver quality, sell the distributor advertising on your site. This way, you don’t compromise your ethics or your reputation because the customer recognizes advertising for what it is... a promotion. Nothing wrong with that at all, because her “guard is up.”
Bottom line...
Don’t allow yourself to be bribed into recommending such products - in the long run, your reputation will be ruined. And so will your business.
On the other hand, when your visitors are rewarded repeatedly by your rich recommendations, they will increasingly like you and respect your judgment and they'll keep coming back for more!
Red flags are warning signs...
“Pay-per-click” method of payment. In this method, you get paid whenever a visitor clicks on your link. No purchase or lead-generation necessary.
Unfortunately, it’s wide open for abuse - very sophisticated folks create incentives to get thousands of people to click on their links. But the visitors could care less about the products being promoted. The scam is virtually unstoppable. And merchants end up paying for nothing.
Sooner or later, merchants seem to throw in the towel against the onslaught. So be wary - this kind of affiliate program tends to dissolve or mutate into a different model.
Multi-tier commission. This is online Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), which is perfectly legal. Do your due diligence to make sure, of course, that a multi-tier program is not an illegal pyramid scheme. If the “game” is to earn income by signing up others, you are most likely dealing with a pyramid. Many people confuse honest, legal MLM with dishonest, scammy pyramid schemes.
With MLM (also known as Network Marketing), it becomes as important to build a strong downline as it does to sell product. Also, MLM companies are subject to numerous regulations (to prevent them from becoming pyramids, basically). Not all online companies are complying (or even know about this!).
Watch for a big shakeout with many of these companies going belly-up. If multi- tier interests you, I would recommend that you check out established offline MLMs that are now online. Investigate all others extremely carefully before you decide to invest a lot of time in these.
If you are a Network marketing representative who is using Site Build It!, go like crazy! You have a big edge over 99% of Network marketers who are mostly failing on the Web.
How To Use Alexa.com to Get the Goods On Merchants
If you haven’t used this strategy yet, now is a good time to use it.
Alexa serves as a wonderful final check in two ways…
1) Its stats indicate how successful a program is.
2) The related links suggest good competing merchants.
Search It! > Popularity (STEP 1) > Alexa Ranking (STEP 2) > sitesell.com (STEP 3)
Prune Possible Partners by PageRank Score
Google uses the quality (and to some extent, the quantity) of in-pointing links to measure the importance of a page. The higher the score, the more highly
Google regards the page. A score of 5 or higher indicates a certain degree of success.
Once again, Search It! pulls in that information conveniently for you.
Search It! > Popularity (STEP 1) > Google PageRank (STEP 2) > domain name that you are researching (STEP 3)
Great investigation! You've grown and pruned a list of affiliate programs for your Site Concept. This may well be your main monetization model. Following the principle of using more than one basket for your eggs, you have spread your programs among several merchants.
Now diversify further still. Take full advantage of what the Web has to offer and investigate other potential income streams…
Check Out Other Monetization Models
Your “Most Wanted Response” may be to have your visitor buy from one of your merchants. But what if you visitor doesn't want that product today? Instead she notices another one of your offerings.
This is a WIN-WIN situation -- your visitor is happy and your Web site is steadily bringing you a stable income.
Some of the following monetization models will be as low-maintenance as affiliate programs are (i.e., no product to develop, store, ship, support, etc.). Others will take more of your time.
Which will work for you? Only you can decide the best fit.
Start now. Investigate and plan your site's monetization models. Take a week, if necessary -- money is involved!
Even though “CTP” is first and “M” comes last, you do have to plan the “M” now .
Why? Because if you don’t investigate and plan “M” now, it would be depressing to find out that your particular Site Concept has very little “monetizability” after you’ve spent months building informative, creative Content!
Also, you may adjust the Site Concept, fine-tune its approach, according to the Monetization Mix you develop now.
Summary: Plan “M” now. Fulfill it later.
Your two basic goals are...
1) Investigate and assure yourself that this Site Concept can indeed make substantial profits. Of course, not every monetization model has to start immediately. But the potential must be there!
2) Lay out your plan for the monetization mix. Which one will be your primary income stream? How and when will you lay out the others? Which others?
You don’t have to sell anything to customers if this does not interest you. Some of the most successful SBIers create pure “information” sites. They are “infopreneurs.” They do not have a product or service to sell. They monetize traffic several ways.
Let’s do a quick overview of some possibilities…
• Google’s AdSense Program - AdSense is tailor-made for Theme-Based Content Sites. Combine participation in the AdSense Program with membership in two or three quality affiliate programs and you have a solid monetization base in place.
How does AdSense work? Upon acceptance in the program, Google selects relevant ads for you to place on your Web pages. You are paid for every ad clicked upon.
• Net Auction Selling - Auction products (hard or digital goods or services) that relate to your theme. Put eBay to work for you.
• E-good Creation/Sellers - Almost anything can be digitized and sold… e- books, photos, software.
• Services - Offer a service related to your niche. Build a client base, locally and/or globally as
• Network Marketing - Use the networking power of the Web to generate warm, willing-and-wanting-to-talk-to-you prospects... people who will call you , not the other way around.
• Online store - Sell hard goods that are related to your theme.
• Local Business - Increase your local reputation and expand your client base.
Bottom line?
Too many small businesses start out thinking that they “want to be an affiliate,” or sell hard goods through an online store. Instead, think of it this way... if you don’t monetize a visitor one way, convert her into dollars another way! The more you diversify, the more stable and sustainable your business will be.
And that brings us to an important decision you need to make…
Move Ahead or Loop Back?
You want to select a Site Concept that can accommodate a variety of Monetization models. If you haven’t been able to find enough good affiliate programs or identify other potential income streams, you may want to reconsider your concept.
Return to part 3. Keep BREAKING OUT and adding more HIGH PROFITABILITY keywords. Come back to part 4 and find more good programs that fit.
If your concept is just so narrow and esoteric, you may want to stop the jet from taking off. In that case, return to part 2 and investigate the next concept on your “short list” of Site Concepts.
The key is not to feel that you must have your entire business worked out “to the nth degree” by working on parts 3 and 4 forever. I don’t need to remind you that Rome was not built in a day, do I?
With that perspective in mind, please allow me to remind you of a small-business truism. The two biggest mistakes any entrepreneur makes are actually opposites of each other...
1) FIRE-READY-AIM - the person who leaps before he looks. If this fits you, I can only repeat Ben Franklin’s quote...
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
In other words... ignore the preparation work at your peril.
2) READY-AIM-READY-AIM-READY-AIM -- the person who researches, then researches some more, then some more.
For this person, I can only offer this profound wisdom...
Fish or cut bait.
Or, as Nike would say...
Just do it!
In other words... Don’t get stuck “perfecting” parts 3 and 4.
So... if you have brainstormed a good Site Concept, picked your HIGHEST- PROFITABILITY topics, selected excellent merchant-partners that you are proud to represent, and if you have identified other potential monetization models, then you are ready to roar ahead.
Time for me to hop off the old podium and remind you...
Before proceeding to part 5, please complete your part 4 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal...
Find, research, and select more POSSIBLE PARTNERS. Rotate the technique used (i.e., Search It!, Affiliate Directories, etc.). Keep your ears and eyes open for other potential monetization opportunities.
Let’s keep going! Are you ready?
Geez, what a question!
After all that preparation, you’re super-ready!…stay tuned.....and dont forget to share this blog with your friends, like on facebook, follow on twitter and bookmark it.
To your Affiliate success,
Victor Osaikh
Prune by Eliminating High-Risk Programs
Find the good programs and eliminate the dogs by considering the following plus signs, minus signs, and red flags. Let’s start with the plus signs, signified by + (which means “good things to look for”). Here they are, in the approximate order of importance...
+ High quality product or service - Remember, it’s your reputation that is on the line (and online!). Don’t recommend products that UNDERdeliver.
+ Merchant has a good site that sells effectively.
+ Ability for affiliate to link straight to individual products, rather than just to the home page. (If the visitor has to find the product that you recommend, your Conversion Rate plummets.)
+ Type of payment model... Pay-per-sale and pay-per-lead are good. This is true “performance marketing.” If your referred visitor delivers the desired response, you get paid. What about “pay-per-click?” See red flags below.
+ Affiliate Support...
• Accurate, reliable, real-time, online accounting, preferably with some kind of ability to “audit” by spot-checking
• Detailed traffic and linking stats
• Notification by e-mail when a sale is made
• Useful marketing assistance -- provides traffic-building and sales-getting tools
• Quality newsletter that educates, trains, and provides accounting
• Professional marketing materials available
• Affiliates receive discount on products
Great affiliate support is important for a “between the lines” reason, too. It indicates a high degree of commitment to the program and its affiliates.
+ Pays good commission - Hard goods have lower margins than digital ones so their commissions will be lower. Still, you should make at least 10% (hard goods) or 20% (digital goods) on any product that you recommend. Don’t be scared off by low-priced products if they offer a good % commission -- the lower dollar value per sale is offset by the higher sales volume.
+ Must be free (no charge) to join, no need to buy the product.
+ Lifetime commission -- If the program pays a commission on future sales of other products to customers that you refer, this is a huge plus.
+ Two-tier commission - If the program pays a commission on affiliates who join because of you, this is also great.
+ Lifetime cookie - Do you receive a commission
if the person you referred returns and buys within one month? Three months? The cookie that tracks this should not expire.
+ Restriction on number of affiliates - You won’t find many of these. But if you do find one, grab it.
+ Monthly payment, with reasonable minimum.
Do all those plus signs have to be present? No. But the more, the merrier.
Minus signs are definite detractors. Naturally, if you are unable to give a + to any of the criteria listed just above, consider its absence to be a minus. And watch out for these negative factors...
— Slow and/or poor support.
— Unethical conduct of any kind.
— Reports of late (or lack of) payments.
— Allowing spam, or seeming to send spam themselves.
— Defective affiliate-joining process. Hey, if they can’t get this right...
— Clauses in the agreement that you find unacceptable.
• Example - If lifetime customers are important to you, then a clause that allows unilateral termination or modification of the agreement at any time by the company without just cause effectively makes the lifetime commitment of no value.
• Example - No exclusivity (i.e., you should be allowed to represent more than one book vendor).
And perhaps the most worrisome factor of all…
— “The dark side” of affiliate programs. Is the program really just a way to legally bribe folks to recommend overpriced, UNDERdelivering products in order to collect excessive commissions?
There is a commission that is “just right” for each product. If the commission is too low, it is not interesting enough for affiliates. If it is too high, it’s a consumer rip-off. (Excessive commissions also push the price of the product up to levels that cannot survive for long in the competitive Net marketplace.)
Your job as an affiliate is an important one. You deliver high-value content that gains the confidence and trust of your visitor/reader. You include recommendations and referrals to your new friends as part of your service and content. Recommending anything less than sterling products is simply sophisticated, subtle fraud.
If you find products that fit your theme but that don’t deliver quality, sell the distributor advertising on your site. This way, you don’t compromise your ethics or your reputation because the customer recognizes advertising for what it is... a promotion. Nothing wrong with that at all, because her “guard is up.”
Bottom line...
Don’t allow yourself to be bribed into recommending such products - in the long run, your reputation will be ruined. And so will your business.
On the other hand, when your visitors are rewarded repeatedly by your rich recommendations, they will increasingly like you and respect your judgment and they'll keep coming back for more!
Red flags are warning signs...
“Pay-per-click” method of payment. In this method, you get paid whenever a visitor clicks on your link. No purchase or lead-generation necessary.
Unfortunately, it’s wide open for abuse - very sophisticated folks create incentives to get thousands of people to click on their links. But the visitors could care less about the products being promoted. The scam is virtually unstoppable. And merchants end up paying for nothing.
Sooner or later, merchants seem to throw in the towel against the onslaught. So be wary - this kind of affiliate program tends to dissolve or mutate into a different model.
Multi-tier commission. This is online Multi-Level Marketing (MLM), which is perfectly legal. Do your due diligence to make sure, of course, that a multi-tier program is not an illegal pyramid scheme. If the “game” is to earn income by signing up others, you are most likely dealing with a pyramid. Many people confuse honest, legal MLM with dishonest, scammy pyramid schemes.
With MLM (also known as Network Marketing), it becomes as important to build a strong downline as it does to sell product. Also, MLM companies are subject to numerous regulations (to prevent them from becoming pyramids, basically). Not all online companies are complying (or even know about this!).
Watch for a big shakeout with many of these companies going belly-up. If multi- tier interests you, I would recommend that you check out established offline MLMs that are now online. Investigate all others extremely carefully before you decide to invest a lot of time in these.
If you are a Network marketing representative who is using Site Build It!, go like crazy! You have a big edge over 99% of Network marketers who are mostly failing on the Web.
How To Use Alexa.com to Get the Goods On Merchants
If you haven’t used this strategy yet, now is a good time to use it.
Alexa serves as a wonderful final check in two ways…
1) Its stats indicate how successful a program is.
2) The related links suggest good competing merchants.
Search It! > Popularity (STEP 1) > Alexa Ranking (STEP 2) > sitesell.com (STEP 3)
Prune Possible Partners by PageRank Score
Google uses the quality (and to some extent, the quantity) of in-pointing links to measure the importance of a page. The higher the score, the more highly
Google regards the page. A score of 5 or higher indicates a certain degree of success.
Once again, Search It! pulls in that information conveniently for you.
Search It! > Popularity (STEP 1) > Google PageRank (STEP 2) > domain name that you are researching (STEP 3)
Great investigation! You've grown and pruned a list of affiliate programs for your Site Concept. This may well be your main monetization model. Following the principle of using more than one basket for your eggs, you have spread your programs among several merchants.
Now diversify further still. Take full advantage of what the Web has to offer and investigate other potential income streams…
Check Out Other Monetization Models
Your “Most Wanted Response” may be to have your visitor buy from one of your merchants. But what if you visitor doesn't want that product today? Instead she notices another one of your offerings.
This is a WIN-WIN situation -- your visitor is happy and your Web site is steadily bringing you a stable income.
Some of the following monetization models will be as low-maintenance as affiliate programs are (i.e., no product to develop, store, ship, support, etc.). Others will take more of your time.
Which will work for you? Only you can decide the best fit.
Start now. Investigate and plan your site's monetization models. Take a week, if necessary -- money is involved!
Even though “CTP” is first and “M” comes last, you do have to plan the “M” now .
Why? Because if you don’t investigate and plan “M” now, it would be depressing to find out that your particular Site Concept has very little “monetizability” after you’ve spent months building informative, creative Content!
Also, you may adjust the Site Concept, fine-tune its approach, according to the Monetization Mix you develop now.
Summary: Plan “M” now. Fulfill it later.
Your two basic goals are...
1) Investigate and assure yourself that this Site Concept can indeed make substantial profits. Of course, not every monetization model has to start immediately. But the potential must be there!
2) Lay out your plan for the monetization mix. Which one will be your primary income stream? How and when will you lay out the others? Which others?
You don’t have to sell anything to customers if this does not interest you. Some of the most successful SBIers create pure “information” sites. They are “infopreneurs.” They do not have a product or service to sell. They monetize traffic several ways.
Let’s do a quick overview of some possibilities…
• Google’s AdSense Program - AdSense is tailor-made for Theme-Based Content Sites. Combine participation in the AdSense Program with membership in two or three quality affiliate programs and you have a solid monetization base in place.
How does AdSense work? Upon acceptance in the program, Google selects relevant ads for you to place on your Web pages. You are paid for every ad clicked upon.
• Net Auction Selling - Auction products (hard or digital goods or services) that relate to your theme. Put eBay to work for you.
• E-good Creation/Sellers - Almost anything can be digitized and sold… e- books, photos, software.
• Services - Offer a service related to your niche. Build a client base, locally and/or globally as
• Network Marketing - Use the networking power of the Web to generate warm, willing-and-wanting-to-talk-to-you prospects... people who will call you , not the other way around.
• Online store - Sell hard goods that are related to your theme.
• Local Business - Increase your local reputation and expand your client base.
Bottom line?
Too many small businesses start out thinking that they “want to be an affiliate,” or sell hard goods through an online store. Instead, think of it this way... if you don’t monetize a visitor one way, convert her into dollars another way! The more you diversify, the more stable and sustainable your business will be.
And that brings us to an important decision you need to make…
Move Ahead or Loop Back?
You want to select a Site Concept that can accommodate a variety of Monetization models. If you haven’t been able to find enough good affiliate programs or identify other potential income streams, you may want to reconsider your concept.
Return to part 3. Keep BREAKING OUT and adding more HIGH PROFITABILITY keywords. Come back to part 4 and find more good programs that fit.
If your concept is just so narrow and esoteric, you may want to stop the jet from taking off. In that case, return to part 2 and investigate the next concept on your “short list” of Site Concepts.
The key is not to feel that you must have your entire business worked out “to the nth degree” by working on parts 3 and 4 forever. I don’t need to remind you that Rome was not built in a day, do I?
With that perspective in mind, please allow me to remind you of a small-business truism. The two biggest mistakes any entrepreneur makes are actually opposites of each other...
1) FIRE-READY-AIM - the person who leaps before he looks. If this fits you, I can only repeat Ben Franklin’s quote...
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
In other words... ignore the preparation work at your peril.
2) READY-AIM-READY-AIM-READY-AIM -- the person who researches, then researches some more, then some more.
For this person, I can only offer this profound wisdom...
Fish or cut bait.
Or, as Nike would say...
Just do it!
In other words... Don’t get stuck “perfecting” parts 3 and 4.
So... if you have brainstormed a good Site Concept, picked your HIGHEST- PROFITABILITY topics, selected excellent merchant-partners that you are proud to represent, and if you have identified other potential monetization models, then you are ready to roar ahead.
Time for me to hop off the old podium and remind you...
Before proceeding to part 5, please complete your part 4 Goal-of-the-DAY, and take note of your Ongoing Goal...
Find, research, and select more POSSIBLE PARTNERS. Rotate the technique used (i.e., Search It!, Affiliate Directories, etc.). Keep your ears and eyes open for other potential monetization opportunities.
Let’s keep going! Are you ready?
Geez, what a question!
After all that preparation, you’re super-ready!…stay tuned.....and dont forget to share this blog with your friends, like on facebook, follow on twitter and bookmark it.
To your Affiliate success,
Victor Osaikh
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