SolveYourProblem
Article Series:
Niche Marketing Opportunities
How
to Find Niche Products
With Affiliate Programs
by Jeff Cohen
The
sole purpose of putting together a niche marketing website
is to make money and to do this you need
to sell products and/or services related to the theme of your
site.
If you do not have your own product or service to sell you
will need to find suppliers who allow you to sell on their
behalf as an affiliate. The process is fairly simple; you join
their affiliate program and use the special links they create
for linking to their product or service from your website.
For each sale you make from one of these links you will earn
a commission. At the end of each accounting period your commissions
are totaled and you are paid out.
There are thousands of merchants who allow affiliates to sell
on their behalf, making the task of searching for reliable
ones quite daunting. Fortunately for you this task has been
simplified by those who created directories of affiliate programs,
here are two of the better ones:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com
This
is a searchable directory of affiliate programs. No "adult",
multi-tier (MLM) programs or known scams make it onto this
directory and each affiliate program is rated by the people
that use them. While useful, this system of ranking is only
a guide as there are many programs that have not been rated
yet.
http://www.lifetimecommissions.com
This
is a directory of affiliate programs that pay lifetime
commissions or residual commissions for life.
What is the difference
between the two? - An affiliate program paying lifetime commissions pays you
every time the customer buys something from the merchant, not
just for the first purchase.
- An affiliate program paying residual commissions for life
pays you commissions on all recurring fees your customer pays,
such as monthly membership fees, web hosting fees or auto responder
fees.
Both of these affiliate directories have search facilities.
You simply type in a keyword related to the theme of your niche
website and a list of related affiliate programs will be displayed.
There are also Affiliate Networks to consider. These are big
networks which administer affiliate programs for hundreds if
not thousands of merchants. The major advantage of joining
an affiliate program through one of these networks is you are
less likely to run into the problem of not being paid your
commissions.
Three of the biggest Affiliate Networks are:
- Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com)
Commission Junction is part of ValueClick, Inc. and allows
you to make use of one very useful feature... You are able
to get your commission payments paid directly into your bank
account.
- LinkShare (http://www.linkshare.com)
Linkshare is one of the largest Affiliate Networks with an
impressive number of merchants using their services. It is
worth noting that they do not manage the commission payments
for all merchants using their services.
- ClickBank (http://www.clickbank.com)
ClickBank differs in that they only deal with merchants who
sell electronically delivered products like e-books. They control
all aspects of the purchase and automatically pay commissions
twice a month.
Not all merchants have submitted details of their affiliate
program to any directory nor do they use the services of an
affiliate network, so if you are still unable to find a merchant
with an affiliate program who sells products related to the
theme of your niche website, it's time to hit the search engines
for your research.
The process is very simple, go to the search engine of your
choice and type in a keyword related to your niche and then
the phrase +affiliate+program. For example, if the theme of
your niche website was related to cheese, you would type cheese+affiliate+program
into the search engine's search bar.
It would then be a simple task of going through each result
listed until you found the perfect affiliate based niche product
you could sell from your website. Before joining any affiliate
program take note of these important points:
1. Most affiliate programs have a minimum payment threshold
typically between $10 and $50. You will only be paid when your
commission exceeds this threshold.
2. Small affiliate programs can be troublesome when it comes
to being paid your commissions. Try contacting the affiliate
program manager who in all likelihood is the product creator
and webmaster all in one. If you don't get a swift response
it's unlikely you'll be paid your commissions on time (if at
all).
# # # # # SolveYourProblem.com : 2007
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