By Candice Pardue

Even in the natural products market, there are affiliate programs to match almost any type of interest – from natural to organic affiliate programs, and cruelty-free or vegetarian affiliate programs, the choices are endless. With so many options, you can work at home doing something you actually enjoy.

The ABCs of Affiliate Programs

You should first understand what an affiliate program is and how it works.  An affiliate program is an opportunity where you can advertise the products or services belonging to another company or individual and earn a commission on what is sold through your affiliate links.  The commission might be a set dollar amount or a percentage of the sale, depending on the company.

Some affiliate programs provide you with your own website – usually a replica of their own.  The site will be customized with referral links that contain a special code unique to you.  This code lets the company know that you are the one who is referring the business.

Other companies might only provide links and advertising banners to affiliates.  With these, you will need to start your own website and then link to their products or services.

One-Level Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs that offer no affiliate levels under you are one-level affiliate programs.  With these programs, the only way you earn money is if an actual sale is made through your own affiliate referral links or website.

Multi-tier Affiliate Programs

Multi-tier (multi-level) affiliate programs provide an additional stream of income by enabling you to recruit affiliates who will be placed under your own affiliate account.  Some companies pay by percentage on every sale your recruits make while others have limits for various levels of affiliates.  There are two-tier affiliate programs that allow you to recruit one more affiliate besides yourself, and they can go up to five-tier programs or even more.

Advantages of Affiliate Programs

One major advantage of affiliate programs is you don’t have to stock inventory or provide the actual service yourself.  This frees your money and time to concentrate on marketing and promotions.  The company will do the shipping, keep tabs on the inventory and process the orders.  You can promote away because you’re free of those worries.  The company benefits because they have you and other affiliates promoting their company on a percentage-only basis.  That’s much cheaper than most paid advertising these days!

Another key advantage is that you can promote products, services and presentations that have already been tested and proved a success.  If you were starting your own company from scratch, you would need to figure in several months or even years for testing to see what works best.  With an affiliate program, the company you are promoting has already done the legwork.

Affiliate programs also enable you to expand your opportunities as often as you wish.  Not only can you join and promote one company’s affiliate program, but many others as well.  You can even promote competitors if you wish.  You’re free to promote 50 affiliate programs all offering similar products if that’s your flavor.  Then, you’ll have the products or services of 50 companies that you can offer through your affiliate links.

Other benefits include:

*Low overhead costs.
*You can work from your own home computer.
*You can switch products or companies easily if one is not working out for you.
*There are always new opportunities.

Promoting Your Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is all about promotion.  There are many ways to promote your affiliate programs online.  Below are some of the most popular online promotion methods and how they work.

Personal Website

Developing a website that sells is the first step to affiliate marketing.  Work on your site’s presentation before you start promoting it.  Make sure the sales presentation is clear and concise with hot selling points, features and benefits, and enticing words to get your visitors to click through to your affiliate websites.  

Content Advertising

You’ve probably heard all the hype about content advertising lately.  That’s because it really does work.  To create content for your site, take a look at all your products and services offered through affiliate programs.  Write informational or how-to articles related to each one, and submit those article pages of your site to the search engines.  Also, write articles to submit to online directories.

The search engines will recognize your site as a content-oriented site, and will begin listing your article pages.  Every article should have your affiliate links within the article text and at the bottom and top that are related to the article.  When visitors arrive through the search engines to read your articles, they are highly targeted and more likely to click on your affiliate links.

Paid Search Engine Advertising

At most major search engines and several smaller ones, you can pay to have your listings appear at or near the top of the search results for keywords that you specify.  You only pay when a visitor clicks your link.  This is one of the most cost-effective forms of paid advertising on the Web today.

Blogs

Posting to blogs or starting your own blog that’s related to your affiliate products is a good way to bring additional traffic to your site.  Blogs are very popular, and they attract readers by the thousands.  The audience is highly targeted as well.

Discussion Boards

To promote in discussion boards, you can’t simply log-in and post an ad.  You must be an active member of the forum and post useful advice as it is needed.  Locate forums that are related to your affiliate products for the best results.  This can take a while to build, but it’s a great place to start if you’re low on advertising funds.

E-mail Signature

Many people do not realize the power of their e-mail signature.  Every time you sign your e-mails, be sure to include a small classified ad after your name along with a link to your affiliate site.  Or, you can include the message as a P.S. – this works very well.

Other marketing methods include e-zine advertising, traffic exchanges, press releases and link trades with other related websites.

As you can see, affiliate programs offer a vast opportunity for people who wish to work at home.  The great thing is you can test the waters with very little investment before actually quitting your day job.