How To Find The Best Affiliate Programs

How I match affiliate programs to my site concept, make sure my visitors get a cookie, and choose the best commission rate and structure.

shaking hands on the affiliate-merchant partnership Recap: What have I accomplished so far? I have a prioritized list of keywords: the best words have the highest demand (3,000 searches per month is low, over 20,000 is good).

I have the lowest supply (under 25,000 websites is good), and I have a few quality affiliate programs, all of which are good matches for my site concept.

So how do I know when I've found a good affiliate program? First of all, it must be a good match for my site concept. In my case, this is free knitting patterns, knitting books, ebooks etc., knitting supplies, and the ever-widening generalized concept of "other things knitters need."

Secondly, a good affiliate program must provide my visitors with a "cookie", so all sales to a visitor will be attributed to me and I will earn a commission on the sale.

Thirdly, it should have a good commission percentage rate.

Fourthly, the commission structure should be uncomplicated and uniform. I don't know about you, but I never did graduate from Rocket Scientist Academy.

Assuming a program is a good match, I will look for a cookie with a long shelf life; a lifetime cookie is of course the best, but programs vary from 30 days on up.

My first choice is never a program that simply gives me a commission on every sale directly from my site. In those programs, a customer might make a click from my site on her first visit, then just go directly to the program site after that; if there's no cookie, I don't get credit for the sale. Or maybe she routinely deletes cookies. Let's not go there...

What's a good commission percentage? Affiliate programs offering electronic goods such as ebooks typically offer the highest commission percentage, normally around 50% or better. Hard goods are much lower, since the merchants' expenses are much greater; 25% is good, 10% isn't bad if the products are high priced or if volume will be high. Repeat sales are also a factor: a lower commission percentage for high-priced vitamin supplements with a high rate of monthly return sales is an example of something you might consider acceptable.

Amazon.com has one of the oldest affiliate networks. Their affiliate commission structure is complex and notorious for leaving affiliates with little to show for their efforts. I advise you to take a look at it simply for the education, and give it a trial if you must but keep a watchful eye on your statistics.

Before you begin to build your website, I'm going to give you a few more tips on finding the perfect niche concept. If you have any doubts at all at this stage, go through these last few steps.

You can use the Google Keywords Tool to expand your keyword list. This tool finds variations on your keywords, and will sometimes find new keywords that relate to your chosen concept.

I use Niche Inspector to evaluate the profitability of my keywords from another angle. Niche Inspector will filter your niche keywords by what people are paying for them in Adwords.

Another thinking process totally different from the profitability model is to put yourself in your customers' shoes. Sometimes quite literally. For example, if your site concept is regarding Pilate exercises for seniors, and you put yourself into your customers' shoes, maybe there are special shoes that she might want to buy. Or maybe her problem is lack of discipline in doing the exercises regularly.

But go beyond the exercises, what else is she thinking about? Obviously she is concerned about her health - what other health issues might she have? What other worries - financial? her invalid husband? By thinking in a totally new direction, you may come up with a different, interesting and profitable niche.

If finding affiliate programs is your problem, try these sources:

Google search: "your keywords" "affiliate program"

AssociatePrograms.com

Refer-It.com

LinkShare

ShareASale

AffiliateScout.com

Clickbank

Read more about Affiliate Programs:

9. Having Problems Choosing The Best Affiliate Programs?

22. Shocking Affiliate Marketing Tip - Sell For 100% Commission

24. The Death Of Affiliate Link Tracking?

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