Choosing An Affiliate Network: Essential Selection Criteria

The Profusion (and Confusion) of Affiliate Marketing Opportunities on the Internet

About three months ago, as I started exploring Internet marketing opportunities, my first experiences can be best described as total confusion and getting completely lost in a very murky labyrinth of hundreds of big-money-from-home opportunities flaunted on the Internet.

Along with the confusion and exacerbating my disillusionment, came the shocking realisation that many of these “quick-rich” affiliate marketing opportunities were  scams  and rip-offs

In my quest to find Internet related opportunities to earn a living, I have been conned more than once and have also lost money in the process of buying in on some of these “opportunities” in the belief that that the sweet sales talk in which these “products” are wrapped, couldn’t possibly all be lies! It must be due to my nature, which perhaps is somewhat gullible, but more trusting the innate goodness (also implying honesty) of humankind.

After my three months sojourn of exploring Internet marketing opportunities I am a wiser, less gullible person. Still believing in the goodness of my fellow human beings, I am now more wary of the vulnerability of human nature, particularly when it comes to the temptation of greed.

To cut my somewhat lengthy introduction short, I have extensively read and studied and researched Internet marketing opportunities, strategies and techniques to the present point where I can say I am marketing and succeeding in Internet marketing. My home business is working and it is growing. I am no guru, not by a long shot, but I know the essential basics about Internet marketing, affiliate marketing and, alas, network or multi-level marketing.

Network Marketing: The Internet’s Cinderella

Network marketing is frowned upon by many and spit on by some Internet marketers and even avoided by some Internet directories and because of this, I initially shied away from network marketing opportunities. “They are pyramid schemes”, I thought. I thought multi-level or network marketing was a typical example of a scam scheme, an Internet rip-off. I avoided familiarizing myself with some affiliate network marketing opportunities because I was under the impression it is about enrolling people into the scheme without a product/service or a dubious product or service and that it was all about building layers of people joining and earning commissions from their enrolments rather than from earning revenue from the sales of the company’s product and/or service. To me this was like contributing towards blowing up a bubble and because the network had nothing to sustain it, the bubble was bound to burst or, at least, deflate, sooner or later.

These would indeed be pyramid schemes and it is because of illegal pyramid schemes and dodgy network marketing companies with dodgy products or services that network marketing got its bad name.

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Bath Water!

It was only later that I discovered (out of curiosity about people’s testimonies about the leveraged income possibilities with network marketing) that network marketing opportunities offered by reputable companies with real, substantive and marketable products and services offer the enhanced income generating opportunities for an affiliate Internet marketer.

The reason network marketing offers increased income earning potential over regular affiliate marketing opportunities is because of the network or down-line of people enrolling under you through whose sales you will also earn commission.

The implication of this multi-level income generating model is that once your down-line is firmly established and successful, your business goes onto auto-pilot and your income becomes passive income, like the passive income from an investment. Hence, a carefully selected network marketing enrolment offers an income opportunity into retirement.

Essential Selection Criteria for Choosing an Affiliate Network

1. The company whose affiliate network you consider to join must have credibility and reputability. Don’t rely solely on their sales pitches and other promotional material, Google the company and search for them in forums and blogs on network marketing.
2. Don’t join before you have established exactly what the products and/or services are. If there is vagueness about what they expect you to market, be skeptical. To me total openness and transparency about the products and services is an essential prerequisite for affiliating myself. If you cannot establish this beforehand, chances are good the network marketing is more about building the network than centring on the marketing of the product. When the incentives for recruitment are greater than for product sales, again, be very skeptical.
3. Establish the appetite in the market for the products and services offered. How has the product been selling? Are their clear signs of growth? Is there a demand, preferably internationally, for what they are offering?
4. Can you identify with the products/services for sale? If not, how would you succeed in marketing these offerings enthusiastically and honestly?
5. Determine the level of support, the availability of promotional tools and process guidance you could expect from the company and your up-line.
6. Transparency about your marketing efforts. For example, would you be able to track visits and conversions to your unique affiliate website/s?
   

A Last Word: Assessing Affiliate Networks Calls for Greater Scrutiny than would be in the case of linear affiliate marketing products due to the potential pit-falls of multi-level marketing as I have alluded to earlier on in this article. The negativity with which network marketing is viewed by some in the Internet marketing community and broader society are compelling enough reasons not to compromise any of the criteria I have listed and to go for only the top-notch companies, like a Top 50 Inc500 Listed Company

If you make the right choice, to combine Internet marketing with network marketing presents you with a very powerful affiliate marketing opportunity!

If You’re An Internet Marketer You Can Even Sell Lingerie Online

An Internet Marketer Selling Lingerie…

I have been out of circulation for a while and have not posted a single blog or an article for about a month. The reason: I had to attend to lingerie matters. Yes, lingerie matters and now I am also revealing my interest and investment in something of a much more traditional and conventional nature; being an importer, wholesaler and retailer of…women’s underwear, or lingerie rather. My perception of the term lingerie as opposed to “women’s underwear” is that it denotes chic, class, sophistication, style, fashion, designer, etc., while underwear is just, you know – bras and panties…Some people are in the women’s underwear business, others in the lingerie business. My business falls into the latter category. You get the idea?

How come lingerie?

So yes, I am an internet affiliate marketer and a marketer of my own imported and exclusive lingerie. And I am a man, with the rationale for my involvement and interest in the lingerie business being firstly my admiration of feminine beauty and my appreciation of the importance of lingerie in enhancing femininity, feminine beauty and sensuality and, secondly, my identification of a market for broader and more exciting and exclusive lingerie ranges in my country, South Africa.

As you become knowledgeable about internet marketing, you realize the internet has no limit to where you can market

In exploring affiliate internet marketing opportunities and learning about the incalculable possibilities and techniques that can be applied with relative ease to bring in substantial income, it struck me how I could utilize and exploit the internet as a marketing platform and tool for my lingerie business and create an audience, a public visibility infinitely larger than my little boutique in Cape Town, South Africa could ever achieve. Hence, the re-focussing and re-alignment of my business from an importer/small-shop-retailer to an importer/large-scale-wholesaler with the world as my oyster…

Online auctioning and wholesale selling of lingerie

I have just started advertising and selling lingerie on the internet and it produced great results within one week. Not by selling individual items, but by selling in bulk at wholesale prices on a South African e-commerce and online auction site called Bid or Buy. And, hey, my profit margin is bigger than my expensive little boutique in a shopping mall, because it’s costing me almost nothing to sell over the internet and I turn over large quantities at a time. Compare this scenario with the overheads of the lingerie boutique with its staff salaries, rental, maintenance etc. with only the local community and seasonal tourists as my potential market. My lingerie business: Linda Mujer Lingerie (this site was designed to focus on the shop only and will soon change dramatically) is now being fully integrated into my internet marketing web-activities. You know what, I think I must shut the little shop…This is really how I feel now and only after my successes with one online site. I haven’t even touched eBay!