Good affiliate programs....how?

[lightpanther]

I hope this is the right place to hope this. I keep seeing advice about joining 'good' affiliate programs. But the truth is (beyond the OBVIOUS bad signs) how do you know without many months of expensive trial and error what aff. programs are "good" prospects to join and what aren't. For example, I recently joined one particular 3-letter company, b ut they seem to have done little but send me spammy emails since about how great an opportunity they are.

A relative newbie here needs some guidance. I would love to join you all-income-from-home guys, but I am not rich enough to fail for 2 years before breaking even in the third!

[TrustNo1]

Well a lot of it is going to be trial and error. I have a big shopping site and i try out as many programs as possible to see what works for ME. Sometimes i already have traffic for what a merchant sells, so it doesn't take too long to see how they work. Other times i like throwing a flurry of PPC their way to test them out quickly. What works for one affiliate might not work for another and a lot of different factors can go into that. What type of site you have, how good you are at marketing merchants to your site visitors, how targetted your traffic is etc.

Another good way i use is keeping an eye on my bigger competitors and watch who they use. They get a lot more traffic and make a lot more money and wouldn't keep a merchant up that wasn't producing. I've found a lot of great merchants this way.

Then there are many other ways some people like using like reading message boards to see how other people are doing with them, checking how they're doing in the network, if they're in one, by looking at their EPC, network earnings etc. But in the end i just like testing them all out for myself. Throw some links up, market them to your site visitors to the best of your ability and you own stats will tell you the truth. Doesn't matter how other people are doing with a merchant, just how you're doing with them.

[skibum]

but I am not rich enough to fail for 2 years before breaking even in the third!

I'd venture to guess that most of the big affiliates here couldnt afford to fail for 2 years before turning the corner to profitablity. Test, test, test & keep the day job till enough things start to come together so that it starts to be a real income.

Sometimes you hit pay dirt right away but I suspect those instances are fewer and farther between as more and more people wake up to the potential of affiliate marketing.

[lightpanther]

A couple of questions then

1) Are there any actual techniques / sources out there which assist with locating good marketing programs?

2) Is this going to continuie to be workable for everyone, then, if more and more people are waking up to it...or is it going to be diluted out of existence, and everyone will have to start up their day jobs again? :(

[guitaristinus]

It probably will take many months of trial and error. But it doesn't have to be expensive.

TrustNo1 has good advice.

I have The Warrior Forum and ABestWeb bookmarked, but I haven't visited them in awhile. I don't trust the websites that rank affiliate programs.

Check out Commission Junction if you haven't yet.

Sure, there's a lot of competition. That's the kind of business it is. It's not going to be workable for everyone.

[mwack]

AM will be around as long as any shape or form of the internet is around, and the internet's only going to evolve, it's never gonna go away. It's just like any land-based business. For example, there are hundreds of real estate brokers in my county. None of them go broke or worry about everyone coming into the brokerage business and crowding the place up. So while there is always that theoretical risk, it isn't likely, and it's probably even less likely than in any other type of business.

[lightpanther]

mwack,

Hey, you make me feel more optimistic :) I hope you're right...that markets will expand as the internet expands, and new forms of virtual marketing will appear.

I guess my problem with finding aff. programs is that ALL such programs of course CLAIM that they are the best thing since sliced bread.

[rfung]

Not to mention, part of the success of an affiliate program rests also in the skill of the publisher.

I may not know or be able to make money with lead pipes, and that merchant for me would be worth nothing, but OTOH you may be making a killing with it too.

That's why 'niche' is a trade secret, and almost as a segue, so is the merchants you use, short of the really big ones, like Amazon, Overstock, which carry so much stuff, the niche is still protected.