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In just the last few years, the marketing landscape has been significantly transformed. The marketing method, that is trending at the moment, is affiliate marketing. Brands are increasingly relying on the power of content creators or those with an online presence to promote their products and services.

Similarly, affiliate marketing has also proven to be a great way for individuals to make money online, turning it from what was a mere side hustle earlier to a full-fledged occupation today. If you’re looking to enter the world of affiliate marketing, you’re bound to want to know which program to choose. 

In this guide, we discuss how to select the best affiliate programs based on your specific needs and goals. Let’s get started!

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? 

Affiliate marketing refers to the process of paying an individual (an affiliate) a commission for every sale of your product or service.

With the primary goal of boosting traffic and sales to the business’s website, affiliates create content across a range of mediums, from websites and blogs to social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, among others. As the influence of video technology continues to grow, AI development companies are implementing AI-driven video analysis. This technology holds the potential to revolutionize the testing and refinement phases by automatically identifying usability issues through video recordings of user interactions.

Studies show that affiliate marketing contributes significantly to major brands’ online sales, ranging from 5% to 25%. Additionally, 20% of brand marketers consider affiliate marketing to be their most successful channel. This highlights how businesses can expand their customer base and boost conversions by collaborating with affiliates, especially when integrating white-label marketing services into their strategies

The major benefit of affiliate marketing is that it’s performance-based, meaning affiliates only get paid when their promotional efforts result in a sale. This model is attractive to both businesses and affiliates because it minimizes risk and ensures that compensation is directly tied to results.

You can get in touch with Clap Creative to leverage the benefits of affiliate marketing and unlock boundless opportunities.

How to Choose the Right Affiliate Program?

Here’s a concise overview of the steps you can follow to choose the best affiliate programs for your specific needs or objectives:

1. Research the Niche and the Product/Service 

The first step in selecting the best platform is evaluating the product or service it sells. Just like the world of SEO has evolved to reward high-quality content, affiliate marketing only works if the product or service you’re marketing offers genuine value to your audience. Working with a white-label marketing agency can enhance this value by ensuring the product aligns with your niche and market standards. 

Marketing high-quality products helps build and maintain your credibility, which eventually translates to more sales. Aside from the quality of the product or service, you must ensure that your existing content is compatible with what you’re marketing. So, for example, if you run a food blog, your best bet is to market kitchen appliances, baking instruments, and so on, as opposed to an ed-tech platform. 

Another tip is to only promote a product or service that you’ve tried and tested and have found to be reliable. Audiences who see creators using the product they promote trust them more, resulting in higher sales. You can also research the product’s competitors to analyze the quality of their offerings and the terms and conditions of their affiliate programs to decide which works best for you. 

2. Evaluate Their Commission Rates

The commission rate of an affiliate program refers to the amount you make for every sale of the product or service you’re marketing. While you’ll find websites offering a wide spectrum of rates, you must choose one that’s worth the time and effort you’ll be putting into marketing the product. Given that influencer marketing is projected to reach $21.1 billion, selecting a program with a competitive commission rate is crucial to capitalize on this rapidly growing industry.

There are a few different payment models you’ll come across, including – 

• Pay-per-sale: This model involves the business paying you a percentage of the profit gained from every sale of their product or service. 
• Pay-per-action: This model involves businesses paying their affiliates an amount for every action, such as visiting their website, filling in a form, subscribing to their newsletter, etc. 
• Promoting subscriptions: Some affiliate programs also pay you a recurring commission every time someone you refer renews their membership or subscription. 

Learn how to customize your affiliate marketing approach for different platforms

3. Evaluate the Cookie Lifetime 

The cookie lifetime or duration, is another crucial aspect to consider when choosing the right affiliate program. The cookie’s lifetime refers to the duration the affiliate link remains active once a referred user clicks on it. So, for example, if a cookie remains active for seven days, you earn a commission if the referred user purchases the product within those seven days. 

The key is to choose a program that gives you enough time to convince your audiences to make a purchase. The longer the duration, the more time you have to convert a potential customer into a paying customer. 

4. Look out for Traffic Leaks

When choosing an affiliate program, you must check the website’s landing page for possible leaks. Traffic leaks refer to ads, links, or other elements, such as banners, that could lead a potential visitor away from your affiliate link when making a purchase.

So, for example, if you intend on marketing audiobooks on Amazon and you notice that their landing page has a banner advertising Audible, you’ll be competing with the brand for a potential customer’s attention and money. 

Traffic leaks are among the biggest reasons affiliate programs often fail, so it’s essential to look for them when evaluating a program.  

5. Ensure the Program Has a System to Track Sales and Payments 

A good affiliate program must offer a system that tracks affiliate sales and payouts. The system must also be able to assign commissions, track affiliates’ performances effectively, and so on. 

While such a system ensures transparency, it also offers affiliates crucial information that can help them improve their marketing approach. For example, with information like the performance of various traffic channels, the total number of paying customers over a given duration, the number of recurring customers, and so on, affiliates can analyze whether their approach is proving fruitful or if it needs to be revised. 

Some examples of such systems include GoaffPro, Everflow.io, and LinkTrust. These systems not only track sales and payments but also provide analytics and insights that can help affiliates optimize their strategies for better results.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, there are various factors you must consider when choosing the best affiliate program. Research, for starters, is critical. You must evaluate the product or service, gather feedback, and, if possible, try it out yourself. This helps boost your credibility as a marketer and builds trust in the product. 

A suitable commission rate, aside from other factors such as cookie duration, traffic leaks, and a system to track performance and payments, is also essential. Make sure you also read and understand the terms and conditions of the affiliate program thoroughly to ensure it aligns with your goals and expectations.

Want to build an affiliate program for your store? With GoAffPro, you can easily set up a program for your store. Check out our app: GoAffPro