Affiliate Marketing - Common and Frequently Asked Questions
This page contains a list of the questions most people have when they’re first getting introduced to affiliate marketing. This list continues to grow and so the place to go for the very latest and most up-to-date questions is the private members area of the UK Affiliate Gold site.
Why can’t I get access to the forum?
The forum is private and to block just anyone from accessing the forum we have put in place a vetting step. We decided against allocating a user name and password to each person who buys UK Affiliate Gold because we want to give everyone the opportunity to choose their own user name and password. The only way to do this is to require you to register yourself. So you need to register as a user of all BKARM Forums first. Once you’ve done this you can then request to be a member of the UK Affiliate Gold user group. You will naturally be approved and once you are you will have freedom to read and post to the forum. Here are the steps you need to go through:
enter the forum through the forum entry page of this site on the forum main page choose the option to “register” and enter you details as requested after registration login with your new user name and password now choose the “usergroups” option select the group you want to join [UK Affiliate Gold] and then click “view information” on the next screen you will have the option to “join group” your request will then be picked up by the BKARM Support Team who will authorise your membership. This may take 24 hours but is typically within an hour [Monday-Friday].
We make no apologies for this process. We want the forum to remain private because our experience is that public forums attract too many mood hoovers and armchair critics. We are determined to make the UK Affiliate Gold forum a valuable resource for all members.
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What exactly is an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is where someone decides to offer a commission to others who promote their product or service. Affiliate programs can be managed by the product or service owner or a third party who specialises in managing affiliate schemes. The concept of paying someone else for introducing a customer or prospect is not new, companies have been using this “pay by performance” tool for centuries. The internet has just made it easier to manage higher volumes of affiliates.
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Where can I find affiliate programs to join?
In the links section of this site you’ll find a number of Affiliate Program Providers you can visit and check out the types of products you can promote as an affiliate. You’ll also be able to register as an affiliate.
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How can I tell a good affiliate program from a bad one?
I cover this in my ABC To Affiliate Marketing report so you can check out the longer answer by clicking here. The short answer is that I look for programs that pay commissions of at least 20% of the sale price. You should also factor in any residual payments that may be made from monthly subscriptions or repeat purchase. In my opinion a bad program will be one where you simply get a “finders fee”, even though the customer may be entering into a long term agreement involving regular monthly payments. A good program will pay monthly in arrears. A poor program will pay quarterly, arguing that this removes the risk of claw-backs because customers have returned product or cancelled their service.
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Are there any UK specific places I can visit for affiliate resources?
Yes there are and you’ll find the sites I use listed in the links section of this site.
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What products sell best online?
There is not one simple answer to this question. Many affiliates will tell you that digital products that can be instantly downloaded are the best products to sell online. The increasing volume and range of eBooks is testimony to the fact that there is demand for this type of product. That said there is demand for many other types of products as well. In the three videos that form part of the UK Affiliate Gold (UKAG) product you hear Patrick Anderson talk about physical products like Pokemon. The reason most people will say that digital products sell best online is because these products are easiest to fulfil online. You will certainly obtain the greatest commission rates for digital products because the production and distribution costs are so low. This means they’re more profitable and so the owners can share a greater portion of their profit with their affiliates.
Don’t be put off promoting what you know but be sure you research the demand. The Steve Nash case study that’s included with UKAG is worth rereading as Steve promotes real products and has clearly been very successful at it. If you bought the Totally Virtual Entrepreneur eBook then you have some great examples of products and services that have clearly worked for each of the people that were interviewed.
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Is it possible to see which affiliate programs perform best?
Most Affiliate Program Providers (APP) will publish league tables or present programs in a hierarchy. The higher up the listing a program is will indicate how popular the product is. This will generally tell you how successful programs are. I don’t recommend you pick a program simply because it’s listed high. You need to do your homework before you pick a program. Stephen Pierce reveals in his eBook, Under Oath, how he’s pinpointed some great programs that were not ranked very high so success is really determined by how a program works for you.
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How will I get people to buy my affiliate products?
This is the big challenge and this is why this way of earning money from the internet is called affiliate MARKETING. Patrick Anderson pulls no punches when he says that you should spend all your money on advertising. I now spend over a £1,000 per month on advertising. I spend no more than £60 a month on my infrastructure. I don’t propose you go straight out and start spending this type of money regularly until you’ve acquired enough experience and knowledge to ensure your marketing spend is way outstripped by your returns. Essentially my operating costs are my advertising expenses. I don’t have any other significant costs.
You will get people to buy your affiliate products and services by placing pay-per-click adverts, by placing ads in ezines, by perhaps starting your own newsletter and maybe writing interesting articles that ezine publishers want. You can even place offline ads in local and national newspapers. My experience of this is that for some strange reason national papers give me the best results. I think this may be because local papers tend to be serving local businesses and so an ad for something that’s being sold online can be totally lost. I don’t do very much offline advertising but I know others who do and they seem to get good results.
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How do I set up affiliate product links?
When you sign up as an affiliate for a specific program you will be given a site URL that identifies you personally. You must use the URL you are given as the basis for any links you create on your website (if you have one) or in ads you place. It’s generally best to have the URL hidden behind text as this helps to protect your affiliate id and generally looks better than a typically long affiliate URL. If you’re advertising in ezines then you should keep you link to less than 60 characters, otherwise it may get truncated and not work. Useful resources for minimising URL links are www.snurl.com or www.tinyurl.com
It’s now widely acknowledged that text links give the best results so if you can use a text link then do so. Product owners may supply ready made text links, image links and banner links. All you need to do with these links is copy and paste them onto your website or into your ad. You should try to use text links alongside images for the reason given above. Banners are not the most effective advertising tool so try to use these sparingly. If you’re placing a banner on a heavy text page then this will work better than placing it on a heavy graphic page.
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How will I get traffic to my affiliate site?
This is an important question because you can make some expensive mistakes if you don’t take care. The first thing to say is that you don’t want just any traffic. Yes you do need traffic, either to your own site or to, say, a Google ad. What you want is quality targeted traffic. This means that less is sometimes more in terms of how many actually buy.
Whatever you do don’t waste your time and money buying 10,000 visitors for £60. If this worked then we’d never need PPC, ezine advertising, opt-in email and so on. We’d just go to a traffic generator and buy a volume of traffic. Sadly, this method does not work. When I have a moment of weakness I occasionally weaken and try out another of these “targeted” traffic generators but I always get the same result, lots of traffic but no customers. I know this because I now have much more sophisticated tracking on my sites and ads. The result is that I can see how little time each person spends on a landing page if they’ve come from a bought source. We are talking in single figure seconds.
If you have a website or plan to publish one then you will generate traffic by simply submitting your site to the major search engines. This will not happen instantly but you will see traffic appearing gradually over time. You will also generate traffic through your PPC and ezine advertising. Reciprocal links are also a good way of generating traffic. This one always catches me by surprise when I check my traffic reports and suddenly see a new source. It often prompts me to check out the source and see if I can negotiate getting my link better placed in return for me doing the same for the other site owner.
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How can I track my performance?
Every good affiliate program manager will provide you with your own affiliate reports. Typically you will be given a URL that will take you directly to your statistics or a login page so you can access them. The better programs will even send you an email every time someone buys their product through your referee. This is a big thrill at first but you may do like me and turn these services off when you start to enjoy a torrent of affiliate sales.
I have now established my own performance tracking using services like Adminder and HyperTracker. Every one of my affiliate links is monitored by either of these services. This means I know how many clicks I’ve had against each link. I know what the conversion range should be so I can determine if a program is working well for me or not. The number of clicks I get also tells me how effectively my advertising campaigns are
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How should I handle US$ commission payments?
Although some affiliate programs will pay you commission via PayPal or allow you to transfer your affiliate account balance into your UK bank account you will find that the vast majority of programs will send you a cheque, in dollars. You will be charged for the privilege of depositing these cheques into a UK sterling bank account so you should seriously consider getting a US Dollar account. All the major banks do these but you should check what fees they charge before deciding which one to go with. My advice is to take this action when you start to see your affiliate commissions grow. It’s not something you need to do straight away.
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How much can I expect to make as an affiliate?
This really depends on you. There are people, and quite a few, who are making six figure incomes from affiliate marketing. There are some super affiliates who can make £10,000 a day and have become millionaire’s from this business. Being realistic, you can’t expect to make a six figure type of income in your first year. In my first year I covered my monthly out goings and I was very happy with this. It meant I no longer needed to work for anyone else. This was just a foundation for building a new lifestyle. You will have to put in some hours to get to good returns that can essentially be left in autopilot. Small steady steps will bring solid sustainable rewards.
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Will I need to be registered for VAT?
If you are only referring people then the answer is no. If you start to process payments then you may need to. You should seek advice from an accountant or visit the HM Customs & Excise site for additional guidance.
I am registered for VAT because I do sell products that I then pay the owner for.
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What will I need to declare to the Inland Revenue?
You will need to declare all your commission payments as income unless you decide to set up a limited company. In this instance your commission payments will be revenue for the company. This can have its advantages and disadvantages so you should discuss this step with a suitably qualified accountant who will explain the implications.
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Is affiliate marketing like Pyramid Selling?
I’m always amazed when someone asks this question. I’ve even had people tell me that affiliate marketing is like pyramid selling after I’ve explained how I make a living. I was in two minds whether to even entertain an answer to this because there is no connection between affiliate marketing and pyramid scams. Affiliates receive commissions for promoting other peoples products and services. Affiliates promote real products and services that people want. I have to be honest and say that I do get a little tetchy on this one because when someone raises this question it always feels as though they’re questioning the right of anyone to make an honest living by any other means than a job. Affiliate marketing is a legitimate honest way for anyone to earn an unlimited income, from wherever they like!
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