Should you promote affiliate programs similar to your own products?
Affiliate Program tips by Fione Tan, Head Internet Marketing Coach.
During one of my private Internet Marketing coaching sessions, there was a question about whether we should join Competitors’ affiliate programs and if yes, how to choose.
First, decide what are your products’ strengths / advantages compared to your competitors products? Here are some tips on how to join the best affiliate programs of merchants selling similar products.
1. Check the commission payout.
- is it for 1 time sale only or also includes commission on your customers’ future purchases?
- do you get paid based on multi-tier affiliate program? Meaning if your customers become an affiliate and use their own affiliate links to complete the purchase, do you get any benefits too?
2. Choose complementary products / range
- if let’s say you sell ladies crystal watches only so you can join other affiliate programs that sells sporty watches, or other branded watches like Rolex, or Piaget since you do not carry these similar brands.
- also look at what other items / products that your customers might need. If you sell silver jewelry, then maybe you can join other affiliate programs that are selling jewelry boxes, or jewelry care such as silver jewelry polisher.
- if you sell only to Asian markets, then you can look for an affiliate program that can cover the rest of the world, so that your customers can also purchase & send to USA, or Europe.
3. Place the affiliate banners in the proper locations on your site
- if the affiliate programs are meant to be your side income (one website can have multiple sources of income), then you should avoid placing competitors’ affiliate programs banners or text links on your own order page, or sales pages.
- insert on other informational pages, eg articles, frequently asked questions, etc
- you can even choose to feature a specific affiliate program product or link directly to the product page of your recommended product. Sample of linking to a specific product page can be viewed on this blog posting :-
http://eonenet.com/wedding_blog/2007/02/27/wedding-jewelry-accessories/
#more-14
This means that those affiliate programs that you join can appear not only in your website, but also in your other blogs.
At the end of the day, you can always sell or recommend a Book about this product from Amazon’s affiliate program. No matter whether you are selling a diet pill or an online stocks trading software, there are surely some books and ebooks written on the market. Therefore when you recommend books from Amazon itself, then you can also earn some commissions from the order.
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May 30th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Hi Fione,
Was reading your blog on \\\”should you promote affiliate program similar to your own product\\\”.
In this post, you have mentioned that we can feature a specific affiliate program product or link directly to the product page of our recommended product. And I can see that you have a direct link to the website of \\\”shop for bridal.com\\\” when you mentioned about their product name.
How to create such link from our website or blog to the merchant\\\’s website where they display their products?
Rgds, Chew Peng
May 30th, 2007 at 10:45 pm
Hi Chew Peng,
Good to see that you are reading the blog. First, you get the basic codes given by the Merchant for you and then that link can be changed for the URL displayed there , directly to the PRODUCT page of the Merchant that you want to feature.
Eg the merchant link codes had link for
http://www.abc.com
But the product page that you liked was http://www.abc.com/product_page1.htm so i would replace the code’s http://www.abc.com with this new URL
Rgds, Fione