Awesome Membership Riches PLR Ebook

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CHAPTER 6: GETTING MEMBERS WITH AFFILIATE PROGRAMS

6.1 The Importance of an Affiliate Program to Membership Sites

Affiliate programs are important to membership sites for a number of good reasons. An affiliate program isn't really a program. It's a business arrangement. Affiliate programs are also known as associate programs, associates programs, referral programs and even bounty programs. Most affiliate programs are free to join. Affiliate programs are a way to earn money without producing your own product.

Affiliate programs allow a membership website to generate additional (other than the membership subscription) income by advertising products that are relevant to the site’s theme. For example, let’s say you own a membership website whose theme is golf. You would recommend products that you like yourself like golf books, magazines, videos and golfing gear. When you have an affiliate agreement with the merchants selling those products, they provide you with affiliate links which you paste into your site. Then when members click on those links and buy those products, you earn a commission. Affiliates programs can earn commissions in three ways: per click, per sale and per lead.

The members on a membership website are helped by the affiliate programs as well. They are given easy access to products that they would otherwise have to search the Internet to find.

On the other side of the aisle, you can let other companies post your ad on their sites and pay commissions for sales of your product or memberships. Sure, you may give away 10 percent of your profit to an affiliate; but 90 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing. You’ll make up in sales quantity what you may lose in percentage of your own net. It’s quite worthwhile in the long run.

Use your e-zine to advertise your affiliate program. Always encourage your newsletter subscribers to forward the newsletter to a friend.

6.2 How Much & How to Pay Your Affiliates

Different companies pay different percentages and amounts for leads and sales. The differences paid for a sale can range from 75% down to 1% depending on the company and the product. What you decide to pay your affiliates will depend entirely upon what you are selling and to whom you are selling it. A good idea would be to check what other companies selling a product comparable to yours is paying their affiliates. However, how much you pay your Affiliates really depends on how much your product/service costs, its profit margin, how much you're willing to give up and what action you want to take place.

Let’s say that your product is priced at $100.00. Let’s also assume that it cost you $10.00 to make it. This leaves you with $90.00 profit is you sell it yourself. The question is how much of this do you want to give away to the person that made this sale possible? Let’s say you offer 50% to your affiliates. It still costs you $10.00 to produce the product so now you will be making $40 profit on the sale. A lot less for sure but 40 is better than the nothing you would have made without the sale.

The other problem is how to pay your affiliates. Money exchanging hands on the Internet presents a whole new set of problems, doesn’t it? However, that problem has been solved for you. Paypal is set up to handle receiving, as well as, sending payments and it takes the money exchange problem out of the equation. When a Paypal account is set up, the bank account of an individual or company is verified, as well as, their credit card information. Paypal provides a quick, safe, easy and secure way to transfer monies between individuals and companies.

6.3 Age-Old Question Is MLM a Viable Membership Model?

If you think you want to get involved with MLM, do your research first. The challenge with MLM businesses is that people at the top are most often the winners. The biggest majority of people at the bottom end up spending money and time to get involved and end up losing whatever they put in. Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a marketing and distribution structure. People at the top sell to those below them, who in turn sell to those below them. The higher up you are in this structure, the more money you can make. Be sure to check with at least a few other people who've entered at your level (who you identify on your own, separate from people the MLM promoter refers you to), and see what they have to say. Find out what they have to say on how - and if it’s possible - to be successful.

There are advantages to Multi-level marketing. First, the start up cost is usually very low and that is a big plus to the work-at-home mom (for example) who has limited funds to launch an online business. It is a way to get started in an online business with a very small personal investment and that is a very appealing thing for many people. Pre-packaged tools and products are provided and that saves a lot of money and relieves the need for warehousing.

Also, sales techniques are given and for the newbie to Internet marketing this is a very attractive advantage.

There are also disadvantages to Multi-level marketing. Many (if not most) people lose money in MLM activities, because they can’t sell the product as effectively as they thought they could. And then there is the problem of credibility. It can become an issue, especially if you start treating friends like they’re customers.

6.4 Preparing Your Affiliate Marketing Materials

There are at least forty affiliate directories providing searchable database's to help webmasters find affiliate programs suitable for their sites. Think of them as the Google of the affiliate world.

Each directory has their own submission policies but in general they will not accept adult or porn sites, or a MLM (a company that pays commissions on more than 2-tiers. Many won’t accept gambling sites and most won’t accept submissions from affiliates themselves, submits need to come from the program owner.

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