What is the Best Free Affiliate Program Online?

Are you searching for the best free affiliate program online? There’s a virtually unlimited number of online affiliate programs that you can join, but you will waste a lot of time and money if you try to promote products that nobody wants to spend their money on. Before you invest your time on any affiliate program, here are some questions you should ask…

1. Is the Affiliate Program Really Free?

You should be on the lookout for hidden charges because many “free online affiliate programs” don’t end up actually being free. If the site has a real product or service to sell, you should not have to pay to promote it. They should be making money from their customers, not from charging their affiliates. A good program will be more than happy to have you as an affiliate because any sales you refer makes them money that they never would have made without you.

2. What Commission Percentage Do They Pay?

Commission varies widely depending on the type of product being sold. Downloadable products such as ebooks don’t cost much to create and can be delivered automatically so commissions from their sales are usually high. You’ll typically get 50% to 75% or more from affiliate sales of ebooks. Sometimes you can even get 100% commissions selling cheaper ebooks and the owner makes their money on future sales to the customers.

For physical products you can expect to earn anywhere between 2% and 20%. Some affiliate programs such as eBay’s partner network will pay you an additional fixed amount if you are referring a new customer who has not bought from them before.

3. How Are Sales Tracked?

Most sales are tracked by cookies. This is a system which places a marker on the customer’s own computer when they visit through your affiliate link, so that future sales will be credited to you.

Some cookies will expire after a certain time so that if the visitor does not buy within, say, 30 days you have lost the chance to make money from them. Other cookies are will last forever as long as the customer doesn’t delete the cookies on his computer. If he does delete them and then buys the product later, your commission is gone. The same is true if he visits the site on another computer by typing the domain name right into his browser, and then buys. Also, if he visits the site through another affiliate’s link, your cookie might be overwritten and the most recent affiliate gets credit for the sale. So you are not guaranteed to get a commission from everyone who visits through your link.

Some affiliate programs track customers by their email address instead of cookies. In this case the first affiliate to refer the customer keeps him, and it doesn’t matter if the customer deletes cookies. This is the best way to be sure of getting your commission but it is not nearly as common to see this with affiliate programs. Of course, you will still lose the customer if he forgets what email address he signed up with and switches to a new one.

And some affiliate programs don’t track sales at all. If the person you refer doesn’t buy right away then you lose the commissions on the sale. This is obviously the worst type of affiliate program from that standpoint.

4. Do You Get Commissions for Repeat Purchases?

Some affiliate programs pay you for only the first purchase that a new customer makes. Others go on paying you for subsequent sales, sometimes for a limited time like 6 months or a year, and sometimes forever. Depending on what the company sells, they may have a lot of repeat purchasers so this can make a huge difference in the amount of money you earn.

Often a customer will only make a small purchase from a company the first time they use them. Bigger purchases come later when they trust the merchant. Receiving repeat commissions can mean that your commissions build up pretty much on autopilot while you continue doing the same amount of work.

Extra tip for you…

Find affiliate programs where you are promoting something the customer will be paying for each month so you can keep getting paid from them. Things like web hosting, auto-responders, and membership sites are great for this because you make money every month from the same amount of work as you would if you had referred them to a one time sale.

5. How and When Do They Pay?

Some companies will pay you once a month by check, usually in United States Dollars (USD). Some use bank wire transfer and have a list of countries they will send to. Others pay through Paypal or another similar merchant services provider.

Some programs will only pay after you reach a certain amount of money in your account. Research all of this thoroughly before you start promoting, especially if you live outside the United States. You don’t want to refer a lot of sales and then find there’s no way for you to be paid.

Those are the basic things that you must look at in an affiliate program before you spend time promoting their products. It is also a great idea to get the product before you promote it so that you know what you are talking about when promoting it. Often times you can get it for free if you tell the owner you plan to become an affiliate but you want to test the product first. This can also help you to find the best free online affiliate program for you to make money from.

Google Adsense is a free program that you can use to make money online. Many internet marketers swear by it and will tell you that it is the best affiliate program online, without a doubt. I tend to agree with them on that because it is so easy to implement and can be used on almost any site in almost any niche. However, it’s not as simple as just signing up and getting paid, you need to learn how to make money online with adsense or you could very easily waste a lot of time and leave a lot of money on the table.

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