You want to deal with a site that has at least a 1% conversion ratio (which means that one out of every hundred customers you send to them turns into a sale). There are not many sites out there which are "experts" at turning visitors into sales, so make sure you go with a Associate Program which has sales copy and website design that "makes you want to buy". After all, you are sending them the potential customers, but it is their job to turn those potential customers into buyers (so you can earn your referral fee). The more they can turn those potential customers into buyers, the more money your make in referral fees.

Going back to our numbers game example from before, if 5% of the visitors to your site click-through to your Associate Program site and THEY convert 1% of your visitors into a paying customer... you'd be making 1 sale for every 2000 visitors to your site.

2000 visitors to your site X 5% click-through rate = 100 potential customers X 1% buying ratio = 1 buying customer. 

As I said before, it is a numbers game!

Also keep in mind your payout amount. If you are earning a $50 referral for that one buying customer, then you are doing well… but if you are only earning a $10 referral fee for that one buying customer, you want to rethink things.

It's worth your while to keep experimenting with different Associate Programs if you want to, because you can join and drop most of them as often as you like.

The Number Three Rule:

Match the product or service to the theme of your site. So if your site is about horses and horse products you don't want to be advertising music CD's or weight loss products (unless of course it is a weight loss product for horses!). If you are selling horse products you'd probably want to be involved in an Associate Program which recommends other related horse products or maybe even become involved in Amazon.com and recommend great horse books. Make it something that has to do with your site or your industry. If you try to recommend website hosting services when your site is all about how to train a horse, you aren't going to get very far with it.

You need to target your clientele so that you are selling or recommending something, by having a link this product or service, which has something to do with what your visitors WANT. I can't stress this enough it's very important! Provide links, services and products, which are related to what your visitors want! I am shocked almost daily by people who build a site and have products and Associate Program that are in no way related to each other.

The Number Four Rule:

Another thing to be concerned with is the tracking software the Associate Program is using. You want to go with a company which has good tracking software, showing your statistics (stats) in real time. You want stats that are easy to understand and that you can check at any point in time to see how you are doing.

Why?

If you post an Associate Program banner, you want to be able to see how much the banner pulls for you, and how many sales it's generating. The same for a text link, personal recommendation, or an endorsement to your customer base… you want to be able to see how many visitors you are sending to the site and how many sales it's generating.

Having real time stats allows you to compare the difference in results between putting a button up and putting up a whole page recommending the product or service. Having real time stats so that you can go and check anytime and see how your promotional efforts are working and how effective they are is really important. So it's important to see real time tracking, which gives you instant information on visitor and sales results.

You also want to be comfortable that the software they use is sophisticated and will track all your sales. Why I emphasize "all" is because you want to make sure they track online, phone, fax, and snail mail order. Many companies only track online orders (which means you get no credit for all sales generated by phone, fax or mail). Other companies use certain "inferior" software that will allow the sale only to be tracked about 80% of the time (which means you lose out on 20% of the commissions that are rightfully due to you). Other companies will only pay you if the customer visits through your link and buys right there… if they come back later and buy, you may not get credit.

We will talk more about this in other articles and go over it in great detail in the articles in the next newsletter about 2 weeks away…but for now, just be aware of it. I am not saying to not do business with a company which may have these problems with their Associate Program, I am just saying that you need to be aware of it before your become an associate.

The Number Five Rule:

Be careful that you don't allow Associate Programs to clutter up your main site or your main goal for the Internet. Don't go crazy with Associate Programs and find 10 different Associate Programs that are perfect for your business and promote all of them on your site at the same time! It just clutters up your site and makes it worthless. Concentrate on one, two or three Associate Programs (if that many) depending on what your business is and what kind of clients you have.

I have joined a few Associate Programs and use them to promote other quality products to my clients (we will talk a little more about the power of this in the last article). I wouldn't want to join a pile of unrelated Associate Programs and start offering website hosting packages, get-rich-quick schemes, Amazon.com books, CD Now, and everything else in the world.

I only recommend products or services that my target market wants. This is extremely important, so I'll repeat it again. I only become part of Associate Programs for sites that have products or services that my target market wants. Notice I did not say "needs" here, I said "wants"… there is a big difference. People buy things impulsively because they "want" them, not necessarily because they "need" them. There are very few products in the world which people "need".

Don't get caught up in more is better because it generally isn't. Just because one vitamin a day is good for you doesn't necessarily mean that 5 vitamins a day are better for you! If you put up too many Associate Programs on your site you end up flooding your market, confusing your visitors, and you won't end up making a whole lot of money. So make sure you stay targeted!

The Number Six Rule:

Deal with a reputable company. If you are ever concerned about a company you are thinking about doing business with, ask for references and do some checks on them. You want to make sure they are very professional. For example if you phone them and they put you on hold forever, or if you get an answering machine - be concerned about that as the customers you recommend to them will be getting the same thing. If you email them, they should respond within a couple of days, maximum and hopefully within the same day if at all possible. You'd be very surprised at how many companies will put you in "voice mail hell" or will not respond to your emails within a couple of days - or not even respond to your emails at all.

Customer response is a very important thing. When you have a problem or a concern (maybe you didn't get your check on time or you have a question about a sale)… and you call or email a company, you want to know that they'll take care of it right away. If you are asking questions about a company's Associate Program and get no answer (or a delayed answer)… be wary. If they can't even take care of you when you express an interest in becoming an associate, then you probably have a pretty good idea that they won't take care of you when you have a problem. You can also guess that they won't take very good care of your customers either!

So be very careful, the company you deal with should be very professional and willing to help you out when you're in need.

On that note, although it is a little off topic… customer service and the speed at which you respond to email or phone messages, is critical. For example, we get over 500 emails a day at this office, and we will make it a point to answer all the emails (barring a natural disaster) by the end of the day (48 hours if there is a natural disaster) - weekends excluded. I attribute this attitude as a major reason for the incredible success of my companies on the Internet.

A Couple of Important Side Notes:

The truth about bulk email and Associate Programs!

One of the myths of Associate Programs is that you join a few, put them in an email message and then bulk email thousands (or millions) of people and make lots of money. That's not the way to do it. In fact it's probably one of the worst ways to do it for a few reasons.

The first reason is that unsolicited bulk emailing millions of people who have not qualified themselves as interested in your product is not very profitable and in a lot of cases... you can end up losing a lot of money! I talk about the pros and cons of this in my course and my "private" Cutting Edge Newsletter, which all course owners get. Click here to learn how to get a copy of the 500+ page course on Internet Marketing and become a private subscriber to my Cutting Edge Newsletter! What you will learn will skyrocket your online business profits through the roof.

Generally speaking most Associate Programs have a bulk email clause in their agreement that says that if you spam you can get terminated from the program and not get paid for any commissions you've earned.

There's also a good chance if you bulk email, you'll probably lose your reputation, lose your Internet connection, and you won't get paid for any commissions you have owing.

Wouldn't that be a waste of your time and money?

There are even recent examples of companies billing for the time taken up with dealing with the complaints and administrative problems caused by spammers who bulk email their Associate Program URL! So you could end up paying out money instead of making money!

When you spam an Associate Program URL you were assigned, it looks like the company is spamming the recipient directly as the URL you are using is for their website… this can damage their reputation and cause an unlimited amount of administration problems.

I talk from experience… we've had problems with associates spamming in the past. We have had to adopt very strict spam policies and if any one spams with our Associate Program we will terminate him/her instantly and all commissions they have earned are forfeited.

It's very important you don't do this, as it will cause you more havoc than anything else. I can't think of one Associate Program who will actually allow you to bulk email. 

Another thing to pay attention to is exclusivity clauses in the agreement. A few Associate Programs state, "they can be the only retailer of a specific product on your site". So say for example you join up with a book selling program, they may state in their contract that you can only sell "their" books and can't be a part of any other book related Associate Program. Or say you join an Associate Program in which you are recommending a website designer... they might have a clause in the agreement that says that you can only recommend and link to their website design company, and no other. So just be careful not to restrict yourself if you don't want to.

By Corey Rudl
Internet Marketing Center

On that note, if you feel that you have a website, newsletter, or customer base that would love to have our Internet Marketing Course, feel free to join our Associate Program. It's FREE (and you earn $65 per sale).  Click here to get all the details and join now.