With the multitude of affiliate programs on the market, how do you decide which ones to promote?

There are lots of things to consider when choosing an affiliate program to promote and to weed out the wheat from the chaff. Here are five tips on how you can find hot affiliate programs to promote:

1) How Much Commission Will You Earn?

This is probably one of the most important questions you will want to ask yourself, as it directly affects how much money you will earn. There is little point in spending hours promoting a program that pays you very little. It’s just not cost or time effective.

It is better for you to promote a high paying program as you get a better return for your time and money.

However, there are times when promoting a lower commission product is a good idea. If you are making, say $10 on the front end, but there is a back end product that you can make $500 on, then it is worth promoting the front end providing you get credited for the back end product purchase too.

2) How Are Commissions Paid?

The Internet is a global market place and the person running the affiliate program may not be in the same country as you are. If they are paying by check then it may cost you a significant percentage of your commission to cash the check. Not good huh?

It may be that they pay through a particular payment processor which isn’t available to your country. You need to check how you will receive your payments and if it is practical for you to do so.

3) How Often Are You Paid?

Obviously, you want to know how long you will have to wait until you get paid! Some merchants will pay you weekly, monthly or even quarterly. You need to understand this in order to manage your cash flow better.

4) What is the Minimum Payout?

This is related to the above two points. Depending on the minimum payout and how often and how you are paid – it might not be worthwhile you participating in the program. If, for example, the minimum payout is $20 and you are paid weekly by check and it costs you $30 to cash the check then there is no point participating if you cannot guarantee to earn more than $30 each week.

5) What Promotion Resources Are Available?

Good affiliate managers will offer a wide variety of resources to their affiliates to help them promote the product and make money. This could be articles, keyword lists, adverts and more. The more resources available, the quicker you can get running and the easier you may find it to promote the product.

Affiliate marketing is a very lucrative business and running a successful program is surprisingly simple. Finding the right product that meets your criteria can help you make the money you want! Use the above questions and the tips from the Success For Affiliate Managers book and you strike gold with affiliate programs.

In order to attract affiliates to your website, you need to place ads on the relevant websites that are attractive enough to draw people who are interested to become affiliates. But… Among a lot of good affiliates, there are a huge number of affiliate scammers on the net who are lying around and waiting to trap you when you start looking for a real affiliate to do deal with. Believe it or not, there is an entire niche industry of these scammers. So, in order to avoid being trapped by these affiliate scammers, you need to follow these simple steps while recruiting an affiliate:

1.First of all, you must make sure that the affiliates recruited by you have your web links on their website. May be you will have to remind them a few times through monthly newsletters and monthly progress reports.

2.Always track your affiliates – where do they get the traffic from – websites, search engines, pay per click campaigns, etc. Check if the affiliates are placing your ads on some of the most popular sites.

3.Check if they are submitting articles or any content about your products to some of the most reputed article directories.

4.In order to get away from the affiliate scammers, do a lot of research of the affiliates when they join your affiliate program. Track where do they get their traffic from, track if that traffic converts. You should definitely check for fraud that affiliates might bring. E.g. if an affiliate joins and starts making a lot of sales in a very short period of time, you should better check where does he/she gets the traffic from, if it’s a legit traffic, etc.

5.Join some good web-master forums and read their posts and threads. Try to search for posts about affiliate’s scamming. This way you will definitely find some user experiences and tips on how to avoid such affiliates.

6.Once an affiliate signs up on your program and starts making sales, you should definitely contact him/her. Why? This way you could develop a relationship with your partner, ask if he/she needs anything more to promote. This way you could also check out if your affiliate responds to your messages.

7.You need to have a good affiliate management system like Click2Sell.EU (http://www.click2sell.eu) in order to completely track all your own and your affiliates sales, track your affiliate’s performance and if you find the bad ones – you can easily ban them. This way you can keep a record of your sales drawn through the affiliate’s efforts and develop a good partnership with your affiliates.

If you have started your own affiliate program and want to recruit some affiliates for your program then the above mentioned tips can provide you with the best possible affiliates in the market and also avoid you from getting involved in undesirable affiliate scammers.

The Avangate Affiliates Program is extremely flexible: it allows software authors and publishers to recruit new affiliates and also to manage their commissions. Same as for the Avangate solution for software vendors, ordering pages on affiliates’ web sites are customizable and “buy now” links easily generated through the Control Panel.

“With the addition of the Affiliates Program, Avangate becomes a powerful electronic sales platform”, commented Dragos Stanescu, Sales Manager. “The system integrates an easy to use and secure online ordering system including effective antifraud filters and order screening, additional marketing services as well as consultancy on how to increase online software sales. This, I am sure, will prove very attractive to vendors and affiliates alike”, added Stanescu.

Another key benefit of the system is the Avangate reward tracking system, ensuring the customer referral cookie is kept active for 120 days. Registered affiliates can therefore earn commissions even when customers place orders a few months subsequently to visiting their web sites. Commissions are also earned on software products bought at the same time as referred products.

More information on the Avangate Affiliates Program can be found at:

http://www.avangate.com/affiliates

About Avangate

Avangate is an eCommerce platform for electronic software distribution incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional marketing and sales tools, such as an affiliate management system, automated cross selling options as well as consultancy on how to increase software sales via the internet.
Avangate is produced and managed by GECAD ePayment, member of GECAD Group – delivering top IT solutions world wide since 1992.

For further information, contact:

Avangate
Tel.: +40 (0)21.303.20.68 Fax: +40 (0)21.303.20.67
Email: info@avangate.com Web: www.avangate.com

For Media related enquiries, contact:

Delia Ene – Marketing Communications Manager
Tel.: +40 (0)21.303.20.68 Fax: +40 (0)21.303.20.67
Email: delia.ene@gecad.com

If you think that you are not prepared to hire an Affiliate Manager to manage your affiliate program management needed by the specific area of your business like incentives, program familiarization and marketing, you have the option to contact various company’s offering the type of the program that can discuss and cater your needs.

If you desired a worthy sales force online, you need the help of dedicated affiliate program management. Stop worrying about the growth of your competitors. Halt watching their glorious rise, you have to leap advance out of the business battle and let them struggle of finding out the reasons for your success.

There are so many agencies or companies that offers introduction to those who are new to affiliate program management. They have their own marketing consultants that can work hand in hand with you and be your affiliate advisors. They know what you want and aid you in choosing the best method in making your business successful.

You may ask how this affiliate program management software can make your online business successful. No man is an island. That means that no single mechanism can make your business triumph. Winning integration of well determined affiliate program management systems can be your greatest tool. In addition, it must be combined with intelligent and power-driven affiliate business marketing force. Integrity and honesty are significant elements for never-ending success, so that affiliate industries can operate pure programs for you. This is your guidance against the confusing networks of intercommunications to make sure that your affiliate program management is implemented correctly even from the very start. As the owner of the online business, you have also to establish a clean program, based on your honesty so you may be able to obtain the respect of your affiliate provider.

Trusted performance of affiliate program management can secure many business affiliates, take care their needs, establish confidence and equip opportunity to address the problems in a timely behavior. You need to know that affiliate program management is not a part time association if your objective is to become one among the most useful business tycoon of today’s generation. Yes, you have invested a lot of money in your business and who doesn’t want any profit out of it. Any affiliate teams can help you whether you’re the oldest merchant in the field of online business proposing to have a new affiliate program management or even if you own the existing one. They will always aid you to escape the costly expenditures from your wrong jumpstart.

Affiliate program software is a result of vigorous hard work by a number of computer experts. The software developers repeatedly conduct researches to produce the most suitable software according to the needs of affiliates and traders. The best software is the one that is convenient for the user.

There is an extended demand for affiliate computer programs. This has become very popular with an ever increasing number of affiliate programs being offered by new companies entering the market. These companies thrive to provide you the best affiliate programs with the help of affiliate computer program software. Such software enables the traders as well as affiliates to join the programs easily.

A number of user-friendly and easy to install software are developed by web developers. You can easily install them by following the instructions on CD of the software. The software is able to build a network of affiliates. You can offer attractive incentives for those joining your program. Once an affiliate has joined your program, affiliate computer software updates you about his performance. The software will enable you to calculate the percentage of commission an affiliate has earned on per click or sale.

Affiliate program software is also helpful in maintaining affiliate accounts. You can easily create and handle the accounts for payment and commission of the affiliates. The accounts can be customized as per your requirements. An affiliate program is remarkably capable of searching the most popular products to promote for your affiliates.

Affiliate computer program software is the building block of your affiliate marketing service business. You can provide exceptionally well organized services to your affiliates with the software.

Affiliate management software is a helping hand for your affiliate program. There are a number of things or processes involved in an affiliate program. You are not always able to manage all those processes with your business. A number of processes run simultaneously in your affiliate business. You surely need some one to help you to manage all your worries.

Almost all companies have an affiliate marketing business. It is really hard to survive without an effective affiliate marketing plan. It involves numerous things to ensure the safety and profit of your firm. Affiliate management software solves almost all your worries. A number of versatile features are there to help you manage different processes. It ensures your success in the market by making a number of daunting tasks simple.

Affiliate management software creates an affiliate account. Then it sends the information or business proposals to the websites and e business houses. If your proposal is approved then you can begin the process of finding and posting links. Affiliate management software can even help you find places to post your links.

There is also unique affiliate management software that protects you against any fraud. A number of times the clients try to generate unnoticed clicks on your links. It will not be possible if you have fraud protection software. The software also enables you to send a number of checks, i.e. payment, together to your clients or affiliates. There are checks on internet that you can send through the software in bulk.

Affiliate management software also makes your payment per sales/click/registration easy. The moment there is any activity with a link it will be reported to you. Your commission will automatically be calculated and sent to your account. Affiliate management software gives you complete solution for a great affiliate program.

So, what are the characteristics of a perfect affiliate marketing manager?

Well, first of all, the perfect affiliate marketing manager has to be able to talk to people face to face and on the phone. Affiliate managers are the face of the company when they go to conferences and anywhere else where there’s contact with potential affiliates. They must be able to sell themselves and their company to affiliates and persuade them to promote their product.

The perfect affiliate marketing manager must be able to provide whatever tools and services affiliates need to make as many sales as possible. They realize that, in general, most marketers are lazy and don’t want to do a lot of work to promote your product. Therefore, affiliate marketing managers must provide tools such as banner ads, emails, and text ads to the affiliate to make it as easy as possible.

Another reason the perfect affiliate marketing manager must be a good “people person” is because he must be able to motivate affiliates to keep selling their products. The affiliate marketing manager either calls potential affiliates on the phone or devises incentives such as bonuses or a refund of part of the commission to keep affiliates motivated. It can be a tough job since most affiliate partners have busy lives, but the dividends of increased affiliate sales are well worth it.

One thing the affiliate marketing manager knows very well is that, when the affiliates are happy, then they will keep promoting products.

Therefore the job of the affiliate marketing manager is to keep everyone happy as possible so they keep promoting.

In addition, the affiliate marketing manager knows the importance of having a good affiliate marketing process for the company. It works well both ways: the affiliate makes money without having to create his/her own product, and the affiliate marketing manager’s company makes money on autopilot with minimal marketing.

If you are starting out in online marketing, you’ll be able to be your own affiliate marketing manager. But as your business grows and you need to hire employees, a good affiliate marketing manager can bring extra profits to your company—even while you sleep or are on vacation with the kids.

If you want to discover affiliate marketing techniques that’ll require hiring an affiliate marketing manager to take care of the extra business, then head on over and get this free video.

Your interface with these companies is known as an Affiliate Manager. This person is your contact with the company, dealing with any problems that may arise, telling you about successful offers you should promote, etc.

It is important that they know who you are. You need to make a good-faith effort to get to know them as a person. It is important because when you have a good relationship with your account manager, you’ll be in a better position to increase your profits!

There are secrets that CPA companies have that they will not reveal to the average marketer. You have to remember that they are not just there to help you, they are there to make money, too. They want the best marketers to succeed- and so most companies can offer higher incentives than what is listed (aka the street price) and also have access to offers that are not published (exclusives).

This means you can make more money per action, AS well as promote offers with very little competition if you make an effort to get to know your affiliate manager. Follow these steps to success!

-Don’t have a hidden agenda. Just talk to them as you would a friend.
-Make chitchat and be nice.
-In turn, they’ll know you by name.
-Talk to them via instant messenger once or twice a week
-Reason is, they know which offers convert best
-They probably have offers that aren’t available to EVERYONE!
-Don’t BS them- they can see your performance. They’ll know if you’re the real-deal or not.
-Use their experience to help you
-Now you have a relationship
-Start promoting some of the offers they are giving you

Good luck!