Affiliate Networks vs Private Affiliate Programs for Your Best Business Ideas
One of the decisions you’ll have to make when choosing affiliate offers to promote Your Best Business Ideas is whether you want to work with private affiliate programs or stick to the bigger affiliate networks. There are pros and cons to each type of offers, so let’s take a quick look at some of the things you should keep in mind.
The affiliate networks like Shareasale and Commission Junction have two big advantages.
1. Since they work with so many products from various vendors, you have a lot more choice.
2. The networks take care of your payments, so there’s less chance that you won’t receive your commissions.
We’ll look at it in more detail in a minute, but just be aware that the second issue is a bigger problem than you might expect.
One of the main disadvantages of the affiliate networks is that it’s not as easy to get in touch with the vendors, and you may even run into trouble getting accepted by some.
Because so many affiliates use these networks, you tend to get treated as just another faceless name by many of the affiliate managers, at least until you start generating enough sales that they take notice of you.
You can often get more personal attention with smaller affiliate programs, because they’re often run by the same person who is running all aspects of the business
- If you have questions, you can often get them answered quicker.
- If you’re referring a lot of sales, there’s usually more potential for negotiating a better commission rate.
- You may have more access to the vendor for things like interviews and other promotions.
The main disadvantage to these smaller programs is that you don’t always gets paid consistently (and sometimes not at all). There are a few things you can do to minimize the risk, however.
Before you commit to any large promotions, run some smaller tests to see how they perform. Ask questions and see how quickly they respond, and keep track of when they send your commissions.
Secondly, you can look at sites like AffiliatesDirectory.com and AssociatePrograms.com to see if there’s any feedback from other affiliates.
Third, do a little competitive research with Google to find other affiliates who are promoting the offers. You can often find other affiliates by searching for the affiliate referral URLs of any given program.
If some of the larger affiliates in your market are promoting the offer, chances are good that you don’t need to worry.
So, now it is up to you to decide where to go with your Best Business Ideas. If you have some comments to this, please post it below.





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