Finding Affiliate Programs

If you've completed the previous section, you should have come up with a niche area or two that you would like to investigate further. You've already determined that these niche areas can be profitable, now you need to find out if there are any good affiliate programs available for you to promote in these niches.

There are three methods you can use to track down affiliate programs:

Join Affiliate Networks

Browse Affiliate Program Directories

Perform a Search for Affiliate Programs

Join Affiliate Networks
Joining an affiliate network is probably the best way to find reliable, performing, affiliate programs. An affiliate network is essentially a service that acts as a middleman between merchants and affiliates. The network provides a list of available affiliate programs along with important details of each and allows prospective

affiliates to select and join programs that are appropriate for them. Most affiliate networks are free to join. Some affiliate networks lump the commissions from all affiliate programs you belong to into one 'paycheck' while others have the individual merchants pay you. Affiliate networks usually keep track of sales statistics and provide marketing tools.

Most affiliate networks arrange the listing of their affiliate programs into a directory structure that makes it easier for affiliates to locate programs. All affiliate programs in a network are free to join. Merchants typically pay big bucks for inclusion in an affiliate network, thus allowing them to be presented to thousands of potential affiliates in one centralized area. This means that for the most part, any affiliate program listed by an affiliate network will be of high quality.

Most affiliate networks also provide performance information for each affiliate program in the form of EPC (Earnings Per Click), and in some cases, weekly and monthly trends. With this information, it is easy for an affiliate to find the best converting programs in their niche.

In my opinion, the following affiliate networks are the best out there:

LinkShare

ClickBank

Commission Junction

Shareasale.com

Each of these affilate networks are free to join. Linkshare, Shareasale, and Commission Junction are huge networks, each with hundreds of affiliate programs to choose from and each of them sponsors a good number of premium programs.

ClickBank specializes in distribution of digital products only. A digital product is basically something that can be downloaded or accessed immediately after purchase. Over 10,000 ebooks, reports, pieces of software, etc. can be found at ClickBank. Digital products generate some of the best affiliate sales on the web today because so many people are looking for information that they can get instant access to. Commissions at ClickBank can run anywhere from 35% up to 75%. I suggest that you sign up with ClickBank immediately and the others A.S.A.P. just to get one necessary step out of the way. To avoid any confusion when you sign up with Commisssion Junction, remember that they refer to their affiliates as 'publishers'.

TIP: Do not sign up for individual affiliate programs until you have your web site plan ready to go. In fact, some affiliate programs may want to see your web site before accepting you as an affiliate. Don't confuse an affiliate program with an affiliate network since you'll want to sign up with the networks sooner rather than later.

Affiliate Program Directories
An affiliate program directory is simply a web site that displays a list of links to affiliate programs. Most of the affiliate programs listed are for merchants that run 'in-house' affiliate programs instead of using the services of one of the affiliate networks. You will find however, that some of the affiliate programs listed in these directories are actually members of an affiliate network. For this reason, it's best to join the networks listed above before browsing any of the affiliate program directories.

Most of the affiliate listings in these directories include a rating and a brief description of each program along with a link to the affiliate sign-up page for that merchant. I've listed a few of the better affiliate program directories below:

Affiliate Program Search
If you don't have any luck finding a viable affiliate program using the first two methods, then you should probably consider putting that particular niche idea on the back burner for now. Sometimes, however, it may make sense to look for an affiliate program on a search engine simply to add a different slant to your business strategy.

Let's use the 'barbecue' example again. Go to your favorite search engine and type in any of the following:

barbecue affiliate

barbecue referral

barbecue associate program

You may be surprised by what you can find using this method.

Remember that regardless of how you locate potential affiliate programs, resist the urge to join any of them immediately. Make sure you have, at a minimum, your web site strategy in place before joining. As I mentioned before, some merchants require that you have a web site online before they will accept you into their affiliate program. In most cases, this is just to make sure your web site does not promote violence, bigotry, pornography, and so forth as well as to make sure it is aesthetically pleasing (you'll hear that term quite a bit) and professional looking.
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