How to Evaluate Affiliate Marketing Programs

Written by ama on June 30th, 2009 in Get Paid To, Money Exchange, Money Investing, Money Making, Money Survey, Money Transfer, Money Tutorial, Quick Money, Uncategorized.

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Lots of people are interested in home businesses to make a little extra cash, to help pay the monthly bills, or to create financial freedom and security.

Either way, internet businesses can help you. The trick is to find a good one; don’t waste time or money chasing empty promises or pipe dreams.

I used the following model to select my internet marketing business - a similar process should work for you as well.

Step 1: Identify Home Business Opportunities

You can easily surf the Net to identify interesting opportunities and obtain their basic information. Use this checklist to filter the opportunities before spending your time on them.

Step 2: Evaluate Selected Business Opportunities

1. Legal?

Avoid things that sound too good to be true - chances are, they are just scams. .

2.Wanted Product?

Is there sufficient demand for the product?Can you make money from the market? Is it big enough? Can it afford your product.

What we want is a large, hungry, market that will buy from us now; and buy additional products later as well.

3.High Profits?

Is there a big enough profit to be made by selling this product to make it worthwhile?Be sure to consider the impact of advertising and start-up expenses on your profits.

4.Competition?

What do other companies charge for similar products. Are you price-competitive.

Similarly, it is very difficult to make a sale if you can’t even get your potential customer’s attention.

5.Generous Commissions?

Can you make a profit without an army of customers? How realistic is that?

Is the proposed commission reasonable? Will you do most of the work, but receive little of the commission?

6. Labor Intensive?

I’m looking for a 4-hour workweek. I’m looking for a business that I can put on “autopilot” after I get it up and running.

The best home businesses I’ve seen have systems and processes that will work for you 7×24x365 – whether you’re spending the day at the beach with your kids, laid up in the hospital, or sailing around the world.

7.Qualitified Visitors?

Businesses need lots of qualified prospects to succeed. For “brick-and-mortar” stores, the key has always been “Location-Location-Location,” but for online businesses, the key is targeted traffic.

Will your up line help send you quality traffic?

8.Affiliate Training?

Learn about the product and marketing, in general. You could muddle along on your own, but such an approach is more likely to fail than succeed.

So, another key is to make sure that your sponsor provides adequate training.

9. Technical Support?

All businesses today require computers somewhere along the way. If you’re doing any form of internet marketing, that computer will likely be yours.

For internet marketing businesses, a lot of the technical support will be needed up-front, getting your system set up before you can even start doing the business.Good technical support can really help your success.

10. Customer / Sales Support

Regardless of the product you end up selling, there may be problems, returns, changes, upgrades, etc. involved.Back-office support, including customer support will be important to your success.

Look for businesses that also include customer and sales support. Some will even help you close the sales – those rate really high in my personal scorecard because I simply hate having to make cold calls, or deal with phones, in general.