Many of you have talked about how difficult it has become to join the affiliate networks now.  It use to be you entered your email address, filled in your address, who to make the checks out to and you were ready to start placing affiliate links on your sites.  Not now, today the affiliate networks require you to fill in information about you, your web sites, how your going to advertise for them and most importantly they want to actually talk with you and phone verify your account.

This new phone call method actually scares the heck out of many people. Many of you have asked me to help you, statements like.. What do I say?  I’m afraid.  I’m going to freeze up and not know what to say.  Can you give me some advice on how to get through one of the phone call interviews?

Well, I like many of you have been turned down too, even this week I have been turned down.  I think it’s quite funny sometimes because I’ve probably been doing this longer than the person interviewing me but I don’t reveal to them everything I have done or I’m currently doing.  I just want to get accepted to their network so I can make us both some money.  I really feel their new filtered techniques are hurting them more than they know but that’s a whole new article in itself.  But there are some things we can do  that will get us  accepted into most of the networks we apply to.

The single best snippet of advice I can offer you is to get prepared for their questions before picking up the phone.  Have a plan, know how you’ll be promoting their offers, what type of offers do you like best, make sure you have a nice looking web site too. Write some notes down and keep them by the phone where you can refer to them quickly when the phone rings. But the method I like best, is don’t wait and worry about the phone call, make the call yourself before they have a chance to.  After filling out your application pick up the phone, your notes and give them a call.  They hate calling just as much as you hate having to go through it, you’re just another name to scratch off their list of calls for the day.  But remember, some networks are not going to accept you anyway, maybe it’s your traffic type, not sufficient, your business is too new, etc.  Just accept it and move on to the next one, if you think like me it’s going to be their loss anyways.

http://www.ClickBank.com

Note: Is it only free to join as an affiliate. If you wish to join as a merchant you will require approval and remittance of a $50 one-time payment.

Commission Junction
Otherwise known as “CJ.com”, Commission Junction has been around for many years and is known to pay on time and provide unbeatable support.  They also feature hundreds of merchants across the board and regardless of the niche market or subject you are interested in promoting, they are bound to have a few lucrative choices from within their directory.

Commission Junction works a bit differently than Clickbank does in terms of allowing their merchants to manually approve or select affiliates.

With ClickBank, you can choose what products to promote and instantly generate your affiliate link without the requirement of the merchant needing to review your website or approve your registration.

Commission Junction enables their merchants to selectively choose who is allowed to participate in each affiliate program, so if you are new to affiliate marketing, you may end up a bit frustrated when you are turned down due to your website not receiving enough traffic or being focused on specific topics.

http://www.CommissionJunction.com

Pay Dot Com
PayDotCom was created by Mike Filsaime and is similar to ClickBank in terms of product marketplace and niche coverage.  One pro to using Pay Dot Com in comparison to ClickBank is that rather than wait every two weeks for a paycheck to be released via postal mail, as ClickBank.com offers, with PayDotCom.com you can receive daily affiliate commission payments directly into your Paypal account.  At this time  only those who are able to create a Paypal account are able to participate as either a merchant or affiliate within this affiliate marketplace.

http://www.PayDotCom.com

Share A Sale
ShareASale.com started quite a few years ago, and back then there were few merchants using their services which made it a difficult job for an affiliate to choose high quality products, since there were so few available.

These days, ShareASale.com has grown into an extensive affiliate marketplace, and since all merchants are required to retain a cash balance of funds used to pay affiliates, it’s a risk-free way to ensure that you are paid for all of your efforts.

ShareASale, like ClickBank and PayDotCom handle all payments on behalf of the merchants and while ShareASale enables merchants to manually approve affiliates like CJ.com does, from my own personal experience approval has been very quick and in most cases not required at all.

http://www.ShareASale.com

Link Share

Link Share is an ever-growing affiliate marketplace and with it comes a great variety of lucrative and high paying affiliate opportunities.

You can create your Link Share account at http://www.LinkShare.com

There are a variety of affiliate marketing opportunities that are available to new and seasoned marketers, and in order to determine what will work best for you, let’s break down the different options:

Pay Per Click
Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the most popular methods of affiliate marketing, as it provides affiliates with a way of earning revenue without having to generate a sale. With PPC, you are credited for each click made by a visitor from your website (or advertisement) to the merchants website. In other words, you connect the prospect to the merchant, and receive compensation from the referral, even if that visitor never makes a purchase on the merchants site.

Pay Per Sale
Pay Per Sale (PPS) is the traditional affiliate marketing module, where you are paid for each sale that is derived from your direct referral to the merchants website or processing agent. This means, that you must pre-sell your visitor, and motivate them to purchase a product on the merchants website, otherwise, you will not be compensated for your efforts. While this obviously requires more effort on your part, the payment received for each sale will be greater than that typically offered in a PPC campaign.

Pay Per Lead
Pay Per Lead (PPL) campaigns are set up to provide affiliates with the ability to earn money from all qualified leads that are generated by their promotional efforts. In this case, you would be compensated whenever a visitor you direct to the merchants website completes a specific lead-based action, such as filling out a survey, application or request for information. Typically, Pay Per Lead offers provide compensation on a fixed rate basis.

There are other options available as well, including:

Residual income: The affiliate is paid each month that a referred customer remains a member of the membership or subscription based website. (Popular with web hosting affiliate programs)

Lifetime Commissions: The affiliate is paid a commission for the first sale and for each subsequent purchase by each specific customer.

In order to begin your journey into affiliate marketing however, you need a clear cut plan of action. The first step is to locate your niche market, which is the target audience you will be focusing on. While it’s easy to simply go with the larger, more popular markets, with those come heavy competition making it difficult to get your foot in the door unless you are a seasoned marketer with the ability to dig into the markets core. Otherwise, if you are a new marketer, it’s suggested that you chisel down your niche so that you are focused on smaller, yet still highly profitable markets.

I also recommend that you try your best to choose a market that you are personally interested in, as it will help you create content, get through the learning curve and stay motivated during sluggish times (and there will be some). To begin your ‘niche research’, simply take out a sheet of paper and jot down categories or ideas of topics that you would be interested in evaluating. It’s wise to focus on products or services that you, yourself, would be interested in purchasing as it’s likely an existing market.

Once you have a decent size list of potential markets, load up the ClickBank marketplace, at www.ClickBank.com and browse through the available products to determine what is currently available to promote. You will want to refine your niche once you have chiseled it down a bit, so that you are focusing on profitable markets with minimal competition.

It will get a bit tricky as most of the broader, common markets such as weight loss, dating, poker, travel, online business and Internet Marketing are very competitive markets, but also bring with it, high profit margins, so try to find something in between to cut your teeth on, when just starting out.

There are many factors to consider when you are looking for an affiliate product to promote:

Price

The price of the product is important. If the price is too high, it will be difficult to sell. Surprisingly if the price is too low it may also be difficult to sell, because people may see the product as low quality or a scam! The price should be reasonable and moderate.

Social Proof

Do some research to find out if there are a lot of complaints about the product or the company selling it. If you find a lot of complaints, you should probably stay away. All products will have some complaints, but if you see too many it’s a bad sign.

Sales Process

The sales process is very important. Is the site attractive and easy to use? Is the sales text convincing? Is there enough information available about the product to help people make a buying decision?

You should try to think about whether this site would make YOU want to buy the product if you were in the market for it. This may be hard to determine if you aren’t in the market for a particular product, but you need to try. If there is very little information available or if the site is ugly or confusing, it may not get many sales.

Service

Is the company’s customer service up to par? You can find out by contacting their support department by email or telephone and finding out how long it takes for the company to respond and how friendly they are to you.

Test!

The most important thing you can do is test. You can go through all of these tips for choosing a product and still come up with a dud. You must test every product for conversions. If your product doesn’t convert well enough to make you a profit on paid traffic, or if you get less than 1-2% conversions on free traffic, it’s probably a dud.

But don’t jump to that conclusion too early! You should send at least 500-1000 hits to a product before you give up on it. A test of 50-100 is not conclusive enough.