How to identify good affiliate marketing programs

Affiliate marketing provides a new way for marketers to earn passive incomes and promote their favorite brands. More than 80% of the publishers and marketers benefit from a wide selection of affiliate marketing programs. Although these programs have seeped into every business out there, are they really worth it?

Affiliates basically work as advertisers whose motive is to make the visitors click on ads within the duration of the cookies. Therefore, it is important to identify a good affiliate program for higher payouts i.e. a program with a fair cookie duration, commission, and other policies.

The performance-based advertising programs involve 4 factors: affiliate marketplace, network, customers or visitors, and brand. In the end, both the affiliate and product/service owner benefits from each purchase.

However, not all these factors are involved simultaneously. For instance, some affiliate marketing programs manage the affiliates directly, instead of a network. In other cases, it is the networks that take care of affiliate payments.

For starters, you can find the best affiliate programs on marketplaces like Amazon associates program, Shareasale, Clickbank, CJ affiliate, and more. You’ll find a wide range of products in various niches on these platforms alone.

Also, here is a detailed guide to identifying good affiliate marketing programs for bloggers.

How to identify a good affiliate marketing program?

Anyhow, the successful execution of an affiliate marketing programs can be quite a challenge. Even if you are a seasoned affiliate marketer, you can go to a loss if you join a substandard program. There are thousands of high-paying affiliate programs but which one is for you?

For this very reason, we are here to help all the novice affiliates identify a good affiliate program:

Do complete Google search

Finding info about any affiliate program is the most straightforward way to know if it is worth your time. Searching on the world’s biggest search engine, Google is the best way to know about niche-relevant and high-paying affiliate programs.

This way is quite simple and only requires you to search for the ‘best affiliate marketing programs of 2021’. You can find many programs that best fit your niche and requirements. However, you have to narrow down your research. You can use the following keywords to search for the most relevant ones:

• Affiliate marketing programs + your niche
• Affiliate marketing programs + the product you want to sell
• All the affiliate marketing programs that your competitors are associated with

Otherwise, you can search for it using a merchant’s name. This way, you would be working for your favorite company and under inspiring mentors.

However, keyword research is not as easy as it seems. Many companies use different wordings to represent a marketing program. For instance, they would be hiring affiliates for their ‘associate program’ or the ‘partner program’.

Google shows you thousands of potential affiliate programs that you can sign up for, free of charge. Scroll through all the results and start taking notes on the most influential merchants and the best programs in your niche.

How does your location affect Google search?

Note that the country you live in can affect your Google search as well because most high-paying programs are country-based. If you do not intend to promote a product locally, it is useless to look for local affiliate marketing programs.

If you happen to be associated with a niche that promotes physical products, Google can do its part here. It will show you all the affiliate programs looking for affiliates who deal in physical product promotions.

A good example of the following affiliate program is Amazon Associates or the eBay Partner Network program. One has to be vigilant in choosing the products to promote. The commission fee varies on the type of product you are promoting on your platform, website, or blog.

Try out affiliate marketing programs directories

Have you ever come across huge listings of affiliate programs? If no, you are missing out on a lot of potential programs. An affiliate directory is a place where managers represent their marketing programs. They come to get visibility in the niche and to attract top-performing affiliates.

Most often, the affiliate listings on the directories are sorted by commission types, niche, and topics. Therefore, it becomes easy for novice affiliate marketers to hunt for multiple marketing programs under the same category or niche.

You can either find them in articles dedicated to directories or simply through Google search.

Find top-performing affiliate links

One option is to open affiliate links from all the websites similar to you. That’s how you can sign up for the same affiliate marketing program as your competitor. However, you would need to know who your competitors are in this business.

No worry! we have got you covered in this area too. First of all, you have to make a list of all the websites and blogs that are similar to yours. Here’s how to do it:

• Pick a website with similar content if you have a new website and use this to find competitors as well as affiliate links
• Use a website tool for competitor analysis and find out all about top-performing websites

Some of the tools for competition analysis are:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush

After that, all you have to do is navigate through the website and find affiliate/promotion links. Further, you can find about the product and the brand by clicking on the links. The affiliate link ID is what you have to look for. Generally, it is used for tracking promotions and sales. But it also indicated that this product is part of an affiliate marketing program.

The last step is as easy; just sign up for the program and wait for the provider’s response. Some partner or affiliate programs are hidden on the website. If you can’t find one, consider writing them an email or look for the sign-up form in the website footer.

Track all the competing products

Another way to find good affiliate marketing programs is to track competing or winning products in the market. Take an in-depth review of some of the winning products. Are they worth promoting? Is Are those affiliate programs worth your time? Look for similar products as you are promoting, click on links and sign up for top-performing programs.

Now, you would come across multiple affiliate marketing programs but we suggest you do not jump to one. Try making a comparison list and weigh all the pros and cons of every program. Comparison articles help a great deal when you need a valuable affiliate program.

Pitfalls of affiliate marketing and how to avoid them?

When it comes to signing up for an affiliate program, many problems can arise. Experienced affiliate marketers know about them while novice marketers are not aware of the risks. The virtual business place is quite crowded and changes fast. Therefore, you must know about all the pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Discontinued affiliate/partner program

An affiliate program discontinuing is a devastating occurrence and a serious setback for a marketer generating significant revenue through it. For instance, if you promote a product, through your website, then changing it for promoting other products can be difficult. The task is not impossible; however, it decreases your conversion rate drastically.

Moreover, it’s a serious blow on the face if you have no alternative affiliate products to advertise for. The main point to understand here is that any merchant or brand can discontinue its affiliate program. This can make all of your promotional efforts and content go in vain.

Affiliate network requiring you to change platforms

For some reason, brands or merchants require you to switch affiliate programs. This can be annoying as you then have to change links as well. For instance, you have 30 blog pages on your website. There, you are promoting 20 products. A merchant comes and asks you to change 10 of the product’s links. So, it can be frustrating to find and change those 10 links among hundreds of affiliate links.

Affiliate marketers with Amazon niche sites have more than 500 affiliate links. So, this gets a little annoying for them. Even if you choose to utilize a link management tool or plug-in, there’s still a lot of work.

Changing social media policies regarding affiliate marketing programs

Let’s take an example to understand how this affects most affiliate marketers. In the early days of affiliate marketing, Pinterest let marketers put affiliate links on their posts. A lot of pinners made money through this strategy. But soon after, Pinterest changed its policy about putting affiliate links.

Even so, Pinterest revised their policy regarding affiliate links a year after, but marketers are now more careful. Any social media platform can revise its policy and forbid the marketers from using affiliate links. This is why many marketers rely on their blog websites to promote products.

Out-of-stock or Discontinued affiliate product

This disadvantage is quite similar to an affiliate program ending for a marketer. If you talk about massive e-commerce stores, such as Amazon, it is a common occurrence. The product gets out of stock or discontinued while the affiliate program remains in place. You are unfortunate to lose revenue if you had been promoting a product successfully that is now discontinued.

Revenue plummets

The organic reach or traffic from social media platforms and search engines can drop. Therefore, an affiliate marketer can suffer traffic plummets.

The organic reach is not going to stay on your website forever. Therefore, you need to incorporate the following strategies into your affiliate marketing business:

• Multiple websites to source traffic
• Email marketing

Affiliate program provider changing permitted promotional strategies

Just as third-party and social media platforms can change their affiliate marketing strategies, so can the network or the provider. The change often revolves around the sourced traffic, but it can be quite a blow for some marketers.

For instance, the affiliate program manager might forbid you to promote his product through email marketing. What if the referral link must only be located on your blog or website?

Most veteran affiliate marketers have a strong email list and they often promote products via email. But if the company they are associated with forbids it, that leaves them in cold.

The solution for this is to set up a direct landing page or an alternative method that does not affect your commissions. If you are good at copywriting, setting up landing pages is a viable solution.

The commission rate changing in the affiliate program

This pitfall hurts plenty of affiliate marketers out there, regardless of their experience in the industry. Recently, Amazon has completely changed the commission rates for its marketers. The drastic decrease in the commission rates has the marketers thinking of choosing another business.

There’s nothing an affiliate marketer can do as the merchant has every right to do so.

Bad recommendations

Even after you put all the due diligence in researching a particular product, someone will buy the product and won’t have positive reviews. They won’t tell you in the first place but the chances are, you will lose a customer.

It is not fun to buy something that does not work right for you. However, it is not right to begrudge the affiliate marketer.

What should you check before entering an affiliate/partner program?

Here are some of the things to consider before entering an affiliate program:

The commission structure

It goes without saying that every marketer selects a high-paying affiliate program. However, one still needs to check the commission structure. While some programs offer recurring commissions, others offer a one-time fee for the referrals you come with.

It is better to select the one offering recurring commissions as you can get multiple commissions for every revenue or sale. You keep the revenue for all the promotional efforts you have done for the company. For this reason, it is beneficial to go with recurring commissions.

The reputation of the company in the affiliate market

There’s no point in promoting products of a brand that is not viewed as good in the customer’s eyes. Before you sign up for a company’s partner program, make sure you go through the content and read customer reviews. Check for the product’s rating and make sure if it is really valued by the existing customers.

The number of affiliate products associated with the affiliate program

It’s beneficial to choose a merchant that allows you to promote multiple products of his brand. This way, it would be easier for you to create compelling content for everybody. Moreover, you would be generating more revenue as compared to promoting products of multiple brands.

Here is our getting started guide for affiliate marketing.

Bottom line

It is best to work with brands that you are passionate about. Customers can see if you promote a product with care and enthusiasm. Ultimately, it all goes down to choosing a good affiliate program.

Selecting the right affiliate marketing platform or program ensures high conversion rate, handsome earnings, and more rewards.

In case of further questions or expert advice, feel free to leave a reply or contact us.