Affiliate Programs: Yay or Nay?

Folks often ask me if it's really possible to make a buck hawking affiliate programs. The question frequently comes after that person has unsuccessfully run links for an affiliate program or two on their web site. Truth be told, affiliate programs can work for the publisher, but only if the publisher is willing to make them work. It's not a question of set and forget. To be effective with affiliate marketing, you can't just plug in and go.

I've said this over and over in the five years or so since I wrote The Complete Guide to Associate and Affiliate Programs on the Net, but it bears repeating: you can't expect to merely drop an affiliate banner on a web page and expect it to start producing revenue.

For publishers, affiliate banner ads aren't worth the pixels they are transmitted with. While the banner ads may do a nice job of providing free branding for the advertiser, the publisher receives no financial gain.

So what does work?

Quite simply, text links. Little unassuming affiliate text links blow the doors off affiliate banner ads when it comes to clickthru and conversion, The right contextual text links are gold. Find a quality affiliate program and product links that best match your site and you're halfway there.

But finding the right affiliate program and the right links ... ah, that's the trick.

Affiliate marketing is all about pay for performance. If the link does not perform, the affiliate is not paid. Once you've established that any given link is a non-performer, it's time to replace it with something that will.

It's very likely that your first affiliate experiments will end in failure. If you're lucky, you'll learn with each consecutive try. Keep at it long enough and you're bound to start making the right choices ... eventually, you'll find a program that works for your site.

Next up: ubiquitous affiliate programs.