Some things to consider with affiliate marketing associate programs are the commission rates, cookie duration, incentives and promotions, and conversion rate.

Merchant advertisers appreciate the amount of business driven to them by the thousands of online publishers who have placed product links on their sites. These publishers have become vital to the success and competitiveness of many of these online companies.

In order to attract more publishers and to keep the ones they have, the best merchants will offer an attractive package in their affiliates program. You’ll need to check out these packages to see which are worth your time and effort.

Check the Details Carefully

So the first question is which affiliate marketing associate programs are most suitable for your website(s)? Before you sign up to promote a merchant you’ll need to read the fine print. If the program is worthwhile, the details they list might look something like this:

Sales Commission: 20%
Lead Commission: .00
Tracking cookie: 60 days
High conversion rate
High average EPC (earnings per click)
100% parasite resistant
Average order around 0
Ongoing incentives and bonuses
Real time reporting and tracking

As a rule of thumb, try to stay clear of affiliate marketing associate programs that offer less than 15% sale commission. Anything less than that is a losing program. That being said, there’s always an exception, isn’t there? In this case, that would be Amazon which offers an average of 4% to 6% to publishers but has a high conversion rate on sales so the rate structure is fair. They also have special monthly campaigns that can run as high as 20%.

A Look at One Advertiser’s In-House Program

Let’s say for example that you love motorcycles but can’t afford to buy or sell them. You want to give people tips and information but also want to make money with all the work you do on your website. So you decide to become an eBay affiliate.

When you link customers to EBay’s expensive or big ticket items — such as motorcycles or parts — the commission can run into hundreds of dollars. Even with 250 million members, affiliates are making incredible money by bringing in new memberships and sales. And if you know a bit about RSS data feeds, you can put eBay’s feed on your website and have a constantly updated stream of items (such as motorcycles or parts) for auction or direct purchase.

It was reported that the top 50 eBay affiliates, are all making over a million dollars a year. Makes you want to head over to eBay and check out the details, doesn’t it?

Or You Can Join the Network Service Providers

You don’t have to go to individual website such as eBay or Amazon and sign up for the in-house affiliate marketing associate programs; you can also join a CPA network provider. These networks act as a middleman and handle all the administrative tasks so that merchants (advertisers) and affiliate partners (called publishers) can concentrate on ad creatives and sales strategies.

Some of the networks are quite large: the behemoth ValueClick is just one example. Its brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Mediaplex, PriceRunner, Smarter and CouponMountain.

Other popular networks offering affiliate marketing associate programs include Linkshare, Clickbank, Shareasale, ClixGalore, AvantLink, and AzoogleAds. There are hundreds more (too many to list here) but when you visit these networks pay close attention to which merchants are signed with which networks. Some have exclusive contracts with only one: for example, if you want to promote Lands’ End or Office Depot products, you’ll need to join Linkshare.

They Can Convert But Can You Drive the Sales?

The conversion rate is a key factor when considering which merchant program you’ll want to work join. EBay converts about 15% on average (according to a March 2008 report on InternetRetailer.com) while the industry norm is probably around 2.5% for a typical online retailer.

By joining the affiliate marketing associate programs of brand name retailers, you’ll likely experience better conversion rates than if you try to promote new companies which are not well known. But to get those commissions you need to get traffic to your site. If you can combine the right set of keywords with good unique content, and “pre-sell” the product, you can position yourself to be the go-between between the consumer and the merchant. And when you do, you’ll be generating consistent monthly income from your website.

Johan Krost is an expert on affiliate marketing and work at vaga de empregos. Discover severals ways to succeed at affiliate marketing on vaga de empregos

Affiliate marketing can be very interesting work, but it’s challenging too. It’s hard to sift through all the information out there and figure out what works for you.

However, one thing many people strongly recommend is redirecting your affiliate links. The logic is that many people just feel more comfortable clicking a link they can understand. Also, some have a bias against clicking a link when they think you might get a commission off of it, even though they’re no impact on their cost. Just an odd bit of human nature.

There are advantages beyond your clickthrough and sales rate to cloaking your affiliate links. I find it is simpler to remember my links. You don’t have to go looking for your link every time; just use the redirect link you created. If they’re well named you won’t have to look them up very often.

There are a number of ways to redirect your links. How you do it depends on what you’re comfortable with and what you can do on your server. You can buy a variety of solutions for this if you want link tracking, or create your own free solutions.

The basic free version is to create a page and do a meta redirect. The one trouble with these is that they can be a touch slow. But all you have to do is create a plain HTML page with META HTTP-EQUIV=”Refresh” CONTENT=”5; URL=html-redirect.html” in it. The 5 indicates that the redirect will take place in 5 seconds, and you can bring it to 0 if you want a fast redirect. And of course if you’re directing to a new domain you will need to include the full address.

I’m most fond of the 301 permanent redirect using my .htaccess file. You can create one of these using Notepad (not Microsoft Word or other word processing software), but before you upload it to your server, be sure there isn’t one there already, as it will mess up your site if you overwrite an existing file with a new one that doesn’t have the current information. But if you have one there already you can edit it to add the new redirects.

The code is simple: Redirect permanent /filename addressyouareredirectingto. This should all be on one line. Once again, if you’re going off site that means you will need the full address. This works only on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite module enabled.

You can also do this in PHP. Within the brackets to start and finish PHP commands, place the following code:

Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );

There are many more ways to create redirects, and if you aren’t using them already I strongly encourage you to investigate them. They make your affiliate links look cleaner and may help with your sales. Just check that the tracking is working properly when you use them.

Stephanie Foster blogs at http://www.aspectsofhomebusiness.com/blog/ about running her home business. Get more tips on successful affiliate marketing at her site.