Evaluating Affiliate Marketing Programs

Lots of people are interested in home businesses to make a little extra cash, to help pay the monthly bills, or to create financial freedom and security.

Either way, internet businesses can help you.Find a good one; don’t waste your time on the losers.

I used the following model to select my internet marketing business – a similar process should work for you as well.

Step 1:  Identify Home Business Opportunities

You can easily surf the Net to identify interesting opportunities and obtain their basic information. Use this list to filter business possibilities before spending your money on them.

Step 2:  Evaluate Selected Business Opportunities

1.       Legal?

First things first – ensure the opportunity is legal, and not just a scam.  .

2.Popular Product?

Would you buy this product? Would your friends or family members?Are there lots of people who might buy your product? If not, you might want to reconsider.

What we want is a large, hungry, market that will buy from us now; and buy additional products later as well.

3.Huge Profits?

Can you make a decent profit?Be sure to consider the impact of advertising and start-up expenses on your profits.

4.How Much Competition?

What do other companies charge for similar products. Are you price-competitive.

Similarly, it is very difficult to make a sale if you can’t even get your potential customer’s attention.

5.       Realistic Commissions?

Will the proposed commission plan require an army of down line members in order for you to make any profit?  How realistic is that?

Is the proposed commission reasonable? Will you get a fair share of the commission?

6.       Labor Intensive?

Personally, I’m looking for a business opportunity that doesn’t require very much of my own time and effort.I’m ready to “semi-retire”; I want a business that will be largely independent of my personal time and energy.

The best home businesses I’ve seen have systems and processes that will work for you 7x24x365 – whether you’re spending the day at the beach with your kids, laid up in the hospital, or sailing around the world.

7.Qualified Prospects?

Businesses need lots of qualified prospects to succeed.For online businesses, the key is targeted traffic.

Will your up line help send you quality traffic?

8.Affiliate Training?

Don’t try to re-invent the wheel, take lessons from the experts and seek out training.Don’t try to muddle along on your own.

So, another key is to make sure that your sponsor provides adequate training.

9.Free Technical Support?

Any business these days requires computers somewhere along the way.  If you’re doing any form of internet marketing, that computer will likely be yours.

For internet marketing businesses, a lot of the technical support will be needed up-front, getting your system set up before you can even start doing the business.Expert and available technical support will be critical.

10.   Customer / Sales Support

Regardless of the product you end up selling, there may be problems, returns, changes, upgrades, etc. involved.Back-office support, including customer support will be important to your success.

Look for businesses that also include customer and sales support.Any help I can get from my upline to close the sales will increase my profits.

Step 3: Take Action

Winners act; losers don’t.Evaluate the opportunity against this checklist. The difference between winners and losers is action – act now.