Don't make mistakes most affiliates make when choosing an affiliate program. 6 proved techniques for choosing a reliable affiliate program.

You have chosen and joined an affiliate program. What next?

Secrets of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertizing.

How I Found The Ways To Get Tons Of High Quality Links To My Sites

If you are in a hurry and don't won't to waste your time looking for a good affiliate program, Here's the list I highly recommend and use myself. These affiliate programs have already been in business for more than 5 years and proved to be the best, most lucrative and reliable!

If you choose one of the recommended programs you can skip the bellow material and go to the next page You have chosen and joined an affiliate program. What next?

The first thing I do before joining a program is checking up the supply/demand ratio. That is how many people are looking for the product the company offers, and how many programs are already offering this product or service.
I go to http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ Overture suggestion tool and check the demand ratio. For example, the word "home based business" 100000 searches a month at Overture. In addition to "home based business" Overture supplies you with more related keywords like:

home business business opportunity
home based business
internet business
ebusiness
home business opportunity
home based business opportunity
online business
mlm business opportunity
internet business opportunity
online business opportunity
work at home business
best home based business
business opportunity home based
internet home business
business oportunities
mlm business
legitimate home based business
internet home business opportunity
work from home business opportunity
work at home business opportunity
start home based business
new business opportunity
international business opportunity
home based internet business
work from home business
homebased business
home-based business opportunity
online home based business opportun
start internet business
home based internet business opport
work at home internet business oppo
home internet based business opport
internet home based business
homebased business opportunity
best home business
at home business
internet based business opportunity
income opportunity home based busin
home base business opportunity
free home based business opportunit
money home based business $60.000.0
start home business
....

This is an excellent source of keywords for you to bid on with Pay Per Click search engines. Pick up only those keywords which have more than 300 searches and go to www.google.com to check the demand ration. Just type in your keywords and keyword phrases into the search box a review the search results.
Remember to put your phrases in quotes!
If your keyword phrase has, for example, 2000 searches at Overture and 1000 search results at Google you've found a mother lode. Your odds are high to win the affiliate game. Though, if demand is 2000 and supply is 2000000, the competition is very tough and you have very few chances to get thru it. I think, the only way to win tough competition is not with affiliate programs but with creating your own product, something unique and of real value that people need badly.
Check every keyword phrase for supply/demand ratio. If most of them have at least equal ratio you can join this affiliate program.

What is your commission? If you don't make at least $20 on each sale, look for a better deal. In ideal case your commissions should be at least 30% on the first level and 10% on the second.
If the program has two tier commissions structure you have the chance to recruit other affiliates to the second level and earn yourself residual income for life.

Imagine yourself a customer who is looking for the product or service your company is offering.
Answer the following questions:

-What is the price? Does it suit me? Are there any other companies where I can buy at lower price?

-What is the quality of the product or service? I suggest you try it yourself to see if it's good. Or at least search the net typing into google the company's name and review the results. Pay close attention to forums. They are the best source of folks opinions and testimonials. Never believe testimonials that are posted on the company's site except for cases when URL (site's address) of those who posted their testimonials come with testimonials themselves. In this case, you can visit the site and write a letter to the owner if you need more info, or just to check up. If the quality is excellent but the price is a bit higher than at competitors stay with this program. The quality has the highest priority.

-How is the front page designed? Does it sell? Think you are a customer. Will you buy yourself from this site?
Does the front page catches your eye? Do you want to read further? If not, look for another affiliate program.

-How easy is the ordering process? The company must accept every major credit cards. Not only PayPal.
If the ordering process is too complicated you'll lose a lion share of your customers. Leave this program.

-Can you link directly to individual products? This is the decisive factor. If you can't, ditch this program immediately. You'll never make a sale if your customers would be arriving at home page only. This is not important only if the company sells one or two products.

-How is product delivered? Does it take long? Are there any surcharges?

If your answer is positive to all the above questions, go to the next step?

What kind of referral links does the company use?
The best way is to use lifetime cookies. That is, when a potential customer comes thru you link, a special little program (cookie) is set into his hard drive. When the next time he returns to the site that cookie tells he was referred by you and when he buys anything you'll get your commission.

Find out if you get you commission on the customer's second and other visits not using your primary affiliate link. If you are only paid if a customer buys only on his first visit, keep away from that program as far as possible. Less than 1% buys on their first visit.

Be very attentive when reading terms and conditions of your affiliate program. They can tell that you get your commission on the second, third etc of customers visits whenever he/she uses your affiliate link.
This is the same as telling you that you get your commission only on the first visit.
Why? Have you ever seen affiliate links?
Have you seen how long are they?
Have you ever seen anyone typing them in their browser?
I hope you got the point.
Ditch this program and post it on my site so that no one can ever join it and be robbed off from his fairly earned money.

Check the programs credibility. Go to google.com and type your program's name without "com" or "net" etc and add +fraud or +scam.
For example,
lougo +fraud

and

lougo +scam

lougo is the name of the company.
Pay attention to use space after the name of the company, then type +, and fraud with no space. Then check all the search results to see if there were any cases of fraud in this company. Be patient investigating your search results, this work will pay off in spades later on. More than 90% of programs don't pay or cheat.

You can also save your time and go to http://check-affiliate-program.com
Type the name of your program in the "check your affiliate program" search box and review the affiliate's comments.

Make the final test. Pretend to have a little problem regarding your affiliate partnership or any kind of question and ask it to your affiliate program's staff in a letter. See the way they handle it. Do you like the answer?
If my letter is not answered within two business days I look for another program. Post this program to my directory and comment to poor affiliate support.
This is very important factor.
It shows the program's commitment towards their affiliates and customers.

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