It’s not rocket science to become an affiliate of a company

When it comes to signing up an agreement to become an affiliate of a company you want to promote their products in your website, the administrative process is easy as filling some personal data, your bank account, PayPal or mail address data for payments and sticking to some legal terms and behavior rules.

It is no more different or complicated than registering or signing up for free with any other website on the internet. After doing that you’ll be assigned an ID number for referral tracking purposes and proper payments, as well as other archives useful to create campaigns in your site, like banners, additional affiliate links, information to share with your audience and some other items. Every advertiser can have its particularities.

It must be easy but do your research first

If you think that affiliating with a company couldn’t be that easy and it might have a hidden catch somewhere, breath calmy again because there isn’t.

Think of this, you don’t pay anything, you are not an employee of the company, and consequently, you won’t get any salary. There is no real stuff you have to be in charge of, nor supervisors, coordinators, coworkers, or any other person to look out on your work.

If nothing happens with your affiliate ID tracking for a long time, there is no problem either. Some companies like Amazon should impose every now and then some restrictions for quiet accounts, but those can be reversed anytime when they become active again.

In some sense there are no other obligations between you and your partner that the money they owe to you every time you lead referrals to their site and they do the action you agreed with such partner at the beginning like buying, clicking, subscribing, etc.

Having said that is always healthy to read everything related to a particular affiliate program you are interested in signing up with, and in specific situations maybe take an advice of a lawyer although this last option rarely should be really needed.

Keys to choose the best company and affiliate program

Evaluation and registry

Different companies have different rules. Sometimes companies require not only that you manifest your interest to promote  their products or services but also they want to know if you are a reliable partner, one that has a well-established business. Some companies will want to do business with you after some months of consolidation of your brand or at least that you populate your website with a minimum of content counted as the number of blog posts.

Some other companies will ask for data regarding the visitors you get daily, or maybe the ratio of conversions you have in your own posts.

In some cases, there will be an evaluation phase to finally get approved or decline your application until you fulfill all of their requirements.

In other cases, maybe the most, there is a process that will last five to ten minutes at maximum without further demands.

Payments

Once you have solved the signing or registering process, you should pay attention to the payment method. Some merchants set the paydays on a weekly or monthly basis. Some of them will release your money until you have reached a minimum and even some of them will pay you the first time by check, and only then you can configure the following payments as electronic transfers.

Tracking

You’ll be assigned an ID number to track every operation your referral accomplish to credit you. Some merchants would allow you to have not only one but several kinds of tracking numbers to organize your campaigns better, keep a record of the behavior of each one of them and to show the compartmental statistics to improve the activities on your business.

Supporting materials

Merchants have designed whole imagery related to their products or services. On them, they have put all the information needed for the visitor to know and take action. This materials formatted as banners, headers, logos, icons, etc., are generally coded in HTML for you to insert right in your site with further steps to show up immediately bearing your affiliate tracking ID on it.

These materials are useful assets for you to have however don’t rely exclusively on them at risk of stuffing your site with a commercial tone than might act against you preventing a visitor to go further in your content. Using wisely, however, could improve not only the whole design aesthetics of the website but also be a potential opportunity to have more referrals.

Operation rules

Often underestimated, operation rules tell you what is allowed and what don’t regarding your use of affiliate tracking IDs and the use of supporting materials.

As affiliate marketers, mainly at the beginning, there is a great temptation to insert our affiliate links everywhere. It’s easy to do, and it’s free. However, there are some crucial considerations to keep the reputation of both you and your partner safe.

If you abuse of your affiliate links and insert them indiscriminately not just in your website but in your social networks and email list too, chances are that you get banned for your partner because there is a significant risk of getting penalized for search engines. So to avoid such a scenario, it is better to stick to the rules that every merchant would establish.

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How much are you interested in what a company offers you?

We’ve talked about the steps needed to set up a commercial relationship with the affiliate program of a company, but now there is relevant to talk about the guidelines you take for ruling your actions into those steps.

Focusing on the admin part of the process might discourage some people from going on. It is ok if you are not willing to wait for a means to get approved for example or if you don’t want to follow some other rules imposed by the merchant or even if the commission or the payment method doesn’t fit with your expectations.

However, let me tell you that all of those considerations as valid as they are shouldn’t be the main reason to stick or reject an affiliate program.

Beyond the awkward admin procedures or norms, should stand the focus on your audience, your niche, and the consolidation of your business as an authority in the field.

So the question to answer is not if an affiliate program imposes a lot or a few rules, or whether it’s going to pay you weekly or monthly. The real questions to answer are how a particular program match with my visitor’s interests? How the products or services offered by this advertiser or brand will help the people that come to my site searching for help? How would this affiliate offer solve a specific problem of the people who made click on my URL looking for solutions?

Once you answer those questions, the remaining would be of secondary importance.

Is there a real plan for affiliate marketing in your strategy or is it a bet?

Could also happen, that you didn’t consider before to register in any affiliate program either because you don’t have a monetization plan yet; because this way of monetizing your website wasn’t for any reason in your projects or because clearly, you don’t like affiliate marketing at all.

If you are in the first two cases, be aware that just because affiliate marketing exists doesn’t mean that you have to include necessarily in your strategy.

Even adsense which its content doesn’t depend directly on you, it responds to the context, that means to the content you populate your entries with. Likewise, affiliate links should fit the context and the whole “editorial line” if you wish of your niche.

In other words, that means that you have to take affiliate link as part of the process of thinking and to write your content; otherwise, it should seem like a something superimposed not about the background.

For the affiliate strategy works in your business should be an integral part of the organic message and information you give to your readers. This way, as the readers go on bearing some questions in mind, if the potential answers smoothly appear within the flow of the text, they should pop up as the logical way to follow.

Just don’t take it then affiliate marketing as a bet, as a random option only because you find it on the road.

Taking the decision to sign up

As you can see, registering with an affiliate program, it’s relatively easy to do. It takes a simple decision some instants to fill an application form.

The hardest part lies on a more complex planning process that involves your interests and desires, the building of the structure but more importantly the reputation of your business and of course meeting the needs of your audience.

Once you have it, al solved, signing up is a piece of cake.