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Points to Consider When Joining an Affiliate Network as a Publisher

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You have spent many hours slaving away building your dream website and now you want to make an income from it. Selling affiliate products is probably, by far the easiest way to earn an income online. With affiliate products you refer a buyer or potential buyer to a merchant’s website where they can purchase a good or service. The visitor is tracked through an affiliate network and if a sale is made, a commission or percentage of the sale is paid to you for your trouble.

Which Network To Choose

As with all industries there are reputable and non reputable companies that operate in the sector. The hard part is working out whether the affiliate network company is trustworthy or not. As affiliate networks are internet based businesses, some companies may try to hide behind the invisible cloud and operate in a dishonest manner. However the internet is a powerful resource. Before joining an affiliate network do some research on the net. You may find good and bad reports written by others about their experiences with various companies. It is better to learn from the mistakes of others than having to suffer an ill fate yourself.

Fees

Most affiliate networks allow publishers to join for free. If the affiliate network is asking you for a fee, assess the following:

1. How much is the fee.

2. Is the fee recurring or is it a one off registration.

3. How long do you think it will take you to recoup the fee you have paid to join. If the fee is only a few dollars, it won’t take long. If the fee is $50 per month you will need to ensure you are generating enough sales to cover this cost, or you will be making a loss before you start.

4. Are the merchants that are affiliated with this network worth the fee, or are the same merchants available on another network that is free to join.

Available Merchants

Before joining an affiliate network you should be able to review the merchants they have on their books. It is important to check the merchants available as these will be the businesses you will promoting on your website. Are the merchants that are available selling products that are inline with the genre of your site. You need to keep asking yourself, if I was the site visitor, would I be interested in buying the item that you are advertising for sale? Or is the item totally unrelated to the rest of the site. Some affiliate networks are quite specific with the type of merchants they advertise, for example merchants from the financial sector.

Getting Paid

This is the most important item to check as money in the bank is the whole idea of selling the products. Some affiliate networks require you to make a minimum amount in commissions before they will make a payment to you. This can be as low as $30 in some cases. Some affiliate networks pay fortnightly and others pay monthly if the minimum amount has been earned. This is important so you can budget you cash flow.

You can easily make a comfortable income by selling products through an affiliate network. The advantages of this include the fact you do not have to worry about guaranteeing the product, product returns or customer complaints. Just ensure you research the affiliate networks before promoting their products.