The potential benefits of affiliate marketing are well understood by many, but some people are not comfortable with the thought of giving up profits on potential sales that they might have made anyway. As always, it pays to look at affiliate marketing from a broad perspective in order to identify what it is likely to accomplish for your business.

Affiliate marketing is not free; you do need to pay out a certain amount of money to the people that sell your products. This is an ongoing expense that never goes away unless you decide to dissolve your affiliate network. One needs to think very carefully whether affiliate marketing is the right approach to take for their business. They will need to determine the percentages that they will need to pay, how they will pay and they may need to adjust their prices in order to cover the additional expense.

There are some downsides to affiliate marketing, but there is an enormous upside as well. Think of an affiliate marketing network as sales force that only gets paid when they sell. You do not need to come up with money for wages; you only need to pay commissions. They can take your product to a wide audience and you will not need to pay a penny for promotions. Given a large enough network, you will likely be able to scale back on your advertising as well. Affiliate marketing can be tricky to set up, but for most businesses it makes great sense. A good affiliate marketing network can send your sales through the roof and see you enjoying a healthier, more dependable bottom line.

Here are some of the biggest mistakes affiliate marketers make when attempting to make money in their affiliate programs:

1. No. 1, many affiliates don’t fully research the affiliate program before they start. Don’t just jump into the first program you come across. Make sure it matches the theme of your site and that it matches your criteria for profitable affiliate programs.

2. They don’t get their own domain name and web host. No one should have to be told this, but if you don’t spend the $10 per year for a domain name and about the same amount per month then you aren’t really serious about running a web business.

3. Many affiliates don’t write their own sales copy. You really believe in your product, don’t you?

4. Way too many affiliates don’t use their signature lines correctly. Don’t spam your e-mail recipients. Keep the lines in your signature lines to a minimum.

5. One of the biggest mistakes many affiliates make is they don’t capture leads before sending them off to buy a product or service. That’s just money down the drain. What if you join another affiliate program down the road? Wouldn’t it be nice to market to that individual again

6. It’s amazing how many affiliates don’t buy the product themselves or use the program they are recommending to others. How can you effectively sell something you haven’t used?

7. Some affiliates race to new affiliate programs like kids running to safety in a game of hide and seek. Don’t join too many programs. You’ll stretch yourself too thin and you won’t be able to effectively market any of your programs.

8. Ineffective advertising. Affiliate marketing is all about advertising. You have to attract the right people to the right product. Don’t just fill your website full of banners. You really need text that will sell your website. Not just a bunch of banners that flash and look cool.

9. Finally, many affiliates only promote one product or service. What happens if that business goes out of business? What happens if the product is recalled or gets into real legal trouble? Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. If that sounds familiar it’s because it is sound and solid wisdom. Heed it.

Don’t make these very common affiliate mistakes. Learn about your business and promote it like you really want to make money.

Web design projects can create time management issues. It takes a great deal of time to code a site if you are not doing it all the time. There once was a time that I would do all of my site designing myself in a bid to save a few extra bucks. It usually worked out well for me, but spending hundreds of hours in front of the computer screen designing websites is not my idea of fun. I prefer to be in the trenches making sales, promoting, producing content and that sort of thing. Time is money after all, and why not spend your time doing the things that you do best? Outsourcing website design can be a massive time saver and is not all that expensive with GetAFreelancer.com and Quote Catcher.

I use Quote Catcher for times that I want a site designed from the ground up. Quote Catcher will allow different designers to bid for your site. You will get up to five quotes, you choose the one that is the best offer from your point of view. The best offer does not have to be the cheapest one. It depends on your needs, if you want a slick looking website, then it is probably wise to go with whichever site designer has the most impressive portfolio. If it does not really matter, go with the cheapest.

When I have smaller or more technical jobs, I use GetAFreelancer.com. With GetAFreelancer.com you give a specific outline of the job that you require and freelance programmers will offer you bids. It is important to distinguish GetAFreelancer from Quote Catcher. The freelancers on GetAFreelancer.com are programmers, you use them for programming related jobs. If you need a shopping cart system, or would like to make some sort of site related improvement, this is the place to go.

Affiliate Marketing Consulting can be a profitable way to turn a few extra dollars from your web space. There are all kinds of things that you can market and it can be a great way to earn some extra income from products that are loosely related to your site but not in competition with you. With affiliate marketing you want to seek a symbiotic blend. You do not want to be pushing products that will reduce your sales, rather you want to push products that your products enhance or that can enhance your products.

The perfect example of affiliate marketing that is well used is an IT security consultant selling security software. Chances are that an IT security consultant will not make a great deal of money from software sales. They are not in the software business; they are in the security business and their clients will most likely have all the software that they need. Having the link on their website, however, makes sense as they just might pick up traffic from people that are looking for software to protect their computers.

Just about every type of commercial website has a range of products that they can offer from which they can earn affiliate marketing income. If you would like us to take a look at your site and advise of some great affiliate marketing opportunities, please do not hesitate to contact us at Brick Marketing.

Some affiliate marketers will tell you to sign up for affiliate program and work it hard. Focus only on that one affiliate program and nothing else. I’m a big believer in not putting all your eggs in one basket.

Of course, you don’t want to get 400 baskets either, especially if you just have two eggs.

At any rate, you should probably sign up for more than one affiliate program, but I would say don’t sign up for more than one at a time. You are building a business so do it logically and consistently. Sign up for one and learn all about it before you start promoting another one. Once you start making money with your first affiliate program then you can find another one and start promoting it. But you want to collect e-mail addresses in your marketing program so that you can market your affiliate programs to your list. Without a list you will find it difficult to make any money no matter how many affiliate programs you’ve signed up for.

How should you determine your commission for affiliate marketers helping you sell your products?
There are various ways to determine commission rates, actually. You can give an automatic 50% commission or you can base it on the amount of work an affiliate has to do to sell your product. You may base it on the benefits you expect to gain from the sell of your products. Whatever method you use to determine commissions, keep this one thing in mind: Affiliate are helping you build your business; treat them well.

One method of determining commissions that is very popular is the cost-production method. You determine how much it costs you to produce one product. An e-book, for example. If it takes you five hours to write and produce an e-book and you value your time at $50 an hour then it cost you $250 to produce the product. Since it is a digital product and you may not have any other expense, that is the total cost to produce one unit of your product. Remember, a digital product requires no inventory so all you have is one unit. The cost-production method says to price your product according to the number of units you expect to sell versus the cost of producing it. As you can see, this method doesn’t work too well for digital products because of the low cost of production. Selling your e-book at $10 a unit will turn a profit for you on the 26th sell, or the 52nd sell if you give out 50% commissions.

I think you should check with your competition. What are they doing? For most digital products, a 50% commission is adequate. But I’ve seen even bigger commissions than that. Whatever you decide to do, keep your chin up and sell a lot of products.