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Affiliate
Marketing Advice:
FINDING THE RIGHT SPONSOR
© Rosamunde Bott 2008
If you are new to
internet marketing, and you are looking
for an online business that you can start at home, you will find many
advertisements and promotions telling you that their affiliate program
is the
best.
So
how do you choose from all these programs?
Which one is going to work for you?
Actually,
this probably not the question you should be
asking.
In
fact, I would suggest you ask two questions.
The
first is, “Which program will I feel motivated to work
hard for?”
The
second is, “How hard will my affiliate sponsor work for
me?”
You
see, it’s not about whether the program is a good one or
a bad one. What
makes a program work for
you is a question of how hard you are prepared to work for it. And if you are new to this
business, you will want a good sponsor to show you what you need to do.
When
you sign up for an affiliate marketing company, or mlm,
you will be signed up under someone else who is a member of the program. This might be the person
who set up the
advert, or you might be assigned a sponsor if you joined at the site
directly.
This
is where you need to be careful. There
are a lot of sponsors out there who do
very little to help their affiliates.
Why
this should be is a bit of a mystery.
After all, by helping their own affiliates to be
successful, they make
more money for themselves. That’s
what
this business is all about. Any
sponsor
who does not communicate with their downline has either misunderstood
this
essential point or does not really give a damn.
If
you are new to this industry, it can be very frustrating
to have a sponsor who does not contact you, even when you email them. It can leave you feeling
lost and
discouraged. It is, of course, possible to be a successful
marketer without a good sponsor - but you will save yourself a lot of
trial and error with one.
So,
how do you find a good affiliate sponsor?
You
need to do a bit of research. Forget
the adverts and affiliate home
pages. Most serious
internet marketers
will have their own website. You
need to
look at these and find someone who you can feel a rapport with. They will usually have a
newsletter that you
can subscribe to for free. Sign
up for
this first and read the newsletter.
Is
it friendly, personal and does it have integrity?
You
can find affiliate websites on social bookmarking and
networking sites.
A
good website will have a photograph of the owner, personal
content (not just advertising copy that they’ve taken from
the affiliate
programs), pages with advice and reviews, and a blog and should make
the reader
feel that they have choice.
When
you are on a website like this, you should ask yourself
how it makes you feel. Do
you feel that
the webmaster is talking to you personally, or does he seem absent? Do his/her words give you
a feeling of trust? Do
they tell you anything about themselves?
Can you contact them? Have
a look at my own home
page.
If
you feel that this person is someone you would like to do
business with, you can then choose to join one of their
programs. If they
have free ones to offer, you might
like to start here first, and then test out what they are like as a
sponsor
without it costing you money. If
you
don’t like them, you can then cancel your membership and go
elsewhere. If, on
the other hand, they seem to be
helpful and willing to answer your questions, then you might want to
upgrade
your free program or join a fee-paying one, knowing that your sponsor
will be
there for you.
This
is my personal affiliate marketing advice for anyone
thinking of joining an online business.
Ros Bott
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