How Much Do You Know About Your Affiliate?
Just as easy for anyone to sell a product online as an affiliate you would also have to carefully check out the network’s reputation and the affiliate offers that you use. They are going to impact your online image and if they are fraudulent, you not only lose the money you made, but you can lose future opportunity for making money because your online reputation is shot via association too.
So, before you sign up to a network program, try to find out how long they have been in business and how carefully they vet their members. You may get some flash in the pan startups that offer outrageously good terms, incredible sign up bonuses, three tiered programs that last a lifetime, and then when you get on and work your butt off, they disappear off the Internet the next day. That is not the position you want to be in, either as an advertiser or a publisher.
So, go to different marketing and webmaster forums and check out the reputation of different offers and networks. You will find people are very helpful and will answer your questions or any misgivings you might have. Be careful to take these with a grain of salt too, however, as people do get paid to promote different affiliate programs. However, it’s better than not doing a little background check on your own.
A couple of good places to find information on affiliate programs are:
This is a webmaster forum, but it also offers and Internet marketing board where you can go and talk about all kinds of great online affiliate strategies.
Another awesome resource to find information on all things about Internet marketing. In particular, they have a board on affiliate marketing where you can get the latest scoop on some of the hottest topics in affiliate marketing, like CPA networks.
If you start getting complaints from people who used your links to go get an affiliate offer that didn’t deliver or committed fraud or theft, immediately remove that offer from your lineup and substitute with another one, while you investigate. This will save you multiple headaches down the road. Now, you may be wondering how the heck you’re going to be able to do that when you might have inserted that link all over the web, in free infoproducts that were downloaded, or on social networking site walls and bulletin boards. Impossible, right?
With a little extra planning you can save your reputation and continue to add marketing offers that uphold your high standards and make good money for you. All you have to do is always use a re-direct URL instead of the actual affiliate URL to send people to the offer. This way, should a problem occur, or even if the offer gets suspended, you can substitute, by simply reprogramming the re-direct URL located on your website in ONE location, rather than trying to grab all the links you sent out all over the web! Pretty nifty, huh? You’ll be glad you did this, especially if it turns out your network didn’t vet someone well enough and ended up hosting a fraud or online thief.
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