Hey guys, welcome back to the course. In this lecture, I will give you some more details about affiliate programs, and some hints on what to watch for each of them. So let's get started. First of all, you will need to go to the website of the merchant you wish to promote and searching therefore an affiliate signup link or for a page, which provides additional information for affiliates. Let me exemplify this on my own website. So let us switch to the website.

And to find our affiliate link. Let us hit Ctrl F in the browser and enter a fee the app and enter until you find a link which will provide additional information about the affiliate program. Usually it is at the bottom of the page, but this is not a rule. The affiliate signup link can be anywhere. So let us click here. And this page will provide additional information on how to sign up as an affiliate.

Okay, let us go back to the slide now. If you don't find the word affiliate in the page, don't forget to search also for a referral program and other alternatives I showed you a while ago. You should also know that some affiliate programs require approval before they allow you to actively promote them. So this means that after you submit your application, they will review your profile and your website and they might approve or reject you for their affiliate program. However, this is not the case of all affiliate programs becomes because some will allow you to promote them from the start. However, if you have an affiliate program that requires you to You and they reject you don't get discouraged because you can re apply for them.

You can change your website or you can check the reason why you they rejected you, and you can fix the issues they pointed out. Rarely, you will also find some affiliate programs that provide you an affiliate manager that will guide you in the process of promoting their product. This is honestly not very often found, but some affiliate programs have also this feature that will help you and aid you in the promotional process. So what are the requirements for joining an affiliate program? To be honest, each affiliate program will have its own requirements. So before joining an affiliate program, you should check exactly the requirements they will list on their affiliate signup page.

If there is no requirement to There, probably you will be good to go as you are, and you don't have to make any changes to what you have already. However, there are some basic requirements for almost all affiliate programs, you need to have a way to be paid and the way to promote their product. So these two are the basics, they need to have a way to pay you and you will need to have a way to get to customers. payment method that is used by almost all affiliate programs is PayPal. This is because they have a very easy to use method for making the payment and also low commissions. So if you don't have a PayPal account already, go ahead and create one.

Another possible payment method is direct transfer of the money to your bank account or using a check mailed directly To address that you enter in the affiliate program set up. For the promotional methods you will need your website, social media or any other channel you can think of that will allow you to reach out to possible customers of the product you're promoting. So my recommendation is that you build your own website using HTTPS. So this is very important nowadays because Google will rank higher websites that have HTTPS protocol because they are encrypted and more secure. Or so you should go ahead and create your own bank paypal account if you don't have one, or you should link your bank account to the affiliate program. This is also accepted and okay if you can do this in the affiliate program you are joining.

So what to look out for when you are searching for affiliate programs that you wish to promote. First of all, you should check there commission rate this is very important because this will define the amount of money you will receive after a successful sale that you generate. So, the commission can be up to 90% or even higher. So, this is a very, very high exemple. However, some affiliate programs will give you only one, two or 5% of the of the sales to generate. Another important thing to check is the average order value.

So, this is the average amount of money a customer spends for a purchase that is made on the specific shop you promote. So if they have $10 product, only then the average order value for the shop will be $10. However, if they have $500 product $1,000 product then the average order value for the shop will be the average For each of the products, the average price of the product for example 750. So, this should be combined with the commission rate, because it is not the same if you promote a $1,000 product with a 1% commission rate, which will give you $10. Or if you promote a $1 product which with a 50% commission rate, which will give you 50 cents for each purchase you generate. Another thing to check is the earnings per click.

This is a metric you will have only after you started actively promoting an affiliate product. So, you should check how many clicks you generated for this specific product and how many customers actually purchased it or signed up for the specific product you're promoting. This is important for you because this provides information about how valuable is the product In the eyes of the customer. So if you are generating thousands of clicks for an affiliate website, and no customer is buying actually the product, then it should be a sign a warning sign for you that the affiliate product does not generate value for the customer or their sales page is not good enough for the customers to buy. And you should move on to another alternative affiliate program to promote or so if you generate only a few clicks on the affiliate website, and customers are actively buying the product, you should know that you are doing a good job and the affiliate product you are promoting is good quality.

This is also very important if you are running paid advertisements for your affiliate links. This will provide information about how much money you can spend on paid ads. So you can also get Cut of each referral you sent to the affiliate product. Another thing to check in affiliate programs is the cookie duration. So this is the amount of time a customer can purchase the product after clicking on your affiliate link, and in which time you will be granted affiliate Commission's So, for example, if an affiliate program has a cookie duration of one day, and a customer comes and clicks on an affiliate link you have and purchases in one day Max, then you will grant bill granted commission if he purchases after two days, you will not be granted the affiliate commission. However, if the cookie duration of the affiliate program is set to infinite and you refer a customer then if the customer uses the same browser and he is not clearing his cookies in the browser, and he makes the purchase After five years for example, you will still be granted affiliate commission if the affiliate program is still up and running.

For most affiliate programs, this will be set to 40 days. However, you should check this on the page where the affiliate program is detailed. So to sum things up, these are the metrics you should be looking for when you're searching for affiliate programs to promote high payouts, high average order value and long cookie duration. So now let me give you some tips on how to succeed as an affiliate. First of all you need to promote products that you love and understand. So if you don't really understand the product, then customers will spot fake recommendations and will know that you are making affiliate recommendations only for the money.

Also, if you don't really Use the product and love it, then this will also be filled in your affiliate recommendation. I know that this is not a must for affiliate programs However, if the product you're promoting is at a reasonable price, I recommend that you purchase it before you start promoting it and you try it out. This will give you a feel of how customers feel after they purchase the product. This is also good because it will actually drive through through the process of purchasing the product and you will know if the customers have a hard time purchasing the product or the method is easy and simple. And customers only have to click and fill out some fields and they already purchased the product. This is important because if purchasing is heavy and it is hard for customers, many will drop Have out before purchasing and your affiliate Commission's will be lower because of this.

Also, another important thing to check is if the merchant allows multiple payment methods for customers, and if the purchasing page is user friendly. So keep in mind that you should promote products that are getting purchased easily and those that you would actually give as a gift to your loved ones. This is very important because if you promote bad products, then your affiliate commissions will be also bad. Another tip I can give you is that you should research emerging categories. These are categories like VR, Internet of Things, 3d printing, verbal attack drones, mic, one a product CBD, and other things like this because they have a very, very growing market, so customer number is growing for this. And also, the number of affiliates who already promote these products is lower than for other mainstream products.

Other categories are fashion, sport, health and wellness. These are also booming currently. Also, don't forget about dating niche because dating is very, very well leveraged by affiliate and it is easy to be recommended to customers. Another big trend right now is mobile marketing. These are specific mobile push notifications that are sent to the to possible customers and it will help you drive traffic to your affiliate links. Okay guys, so this is all for this lecture.

I will see you in the next one.