Partner Marketer

The question is always being asked and no one really likes to answer it.

You know that there is money being made with affiliate programs. But you don’t know where to start. And you have a simple question: What kind of programs are people making money with?

I totally know the feeling. Back when I was starting out with affiliate marketing 10 years ago there were maybe 60-80 programs total.

Almost all of them were retail and sales oriented paying some ridiculously low commission for the honor of promoting some big name brand on your site.

Today there are thousands. It’s become the exception to find a good product or service that you like and would like to promote, but the company doesn’t offer an affiliate-type program.

So in a society where many people have problems deciding between a hot dog and a hamburger it’s easy to become paralyzed with all the affiliate program choices available.

So what programs to promote? Everybody will tell you the same thing. And I have to do it as well. You need to find out for yourself. You need to test. And test again.

A lot of times there are really good programs out there that top affiliates would never dream of telling anyone about. They don’t like competition.

But let me help you out a little bit.

So what are people making money with in affiliate marketing in 2008?
It’s not too hard to find out. All you need to do is to talk to 3-4 affiliate networks and find out where they’re really making the dough. What you’ll find is that everybody has pretty much the same offers.

Let’s have a look:

Social Network Accessories and Tools

The market for nice little tools, widgets and gizmos to pimp out your MySpace or Facebook page looks like it is continuing to do really well. And when Interactive Corp (the huge company that owns Ticketmaster, Expedia and others) decided to get in on the action with high paying offers for downloadable tools, there is plenty of money to go around.

Dating

I don’t think I have to explain why this is hot. It always will be, especially if you have an audience with credit cards that likes to pay for dating services, you can make a lot of money.

Mobile Offers

If the only thing a user has to do to sign up for ring tones or other mobile offers that pay affiliates $6-$16 per sign-up is to put in their cell phone number and enter a PIN code sent to their cell, we have a thriving affiliate market.

Tougher regulation by the mobile phone carriers is coming up as we speak so expect to see conversion rates continue to drop.

Financial Services

Mortgages used to be really hot. When interest rates go up and nobody qualifies anymore it’s not as hot as it used to be. But there is still a lot of money in helping people get into more debt, then helping them get out of that debt, plus insuring their car, house and life.

Long tail retail based programs

When someone is searching for a specific item in a retailers catalog she is ready to buy! And if you can grab that prospect from a search engine, you’re bound to make a sale. The one with the most keywords and best landing pages win in this game. This is where you can find a lot of golden nugget programs that most people don’t know about.

At the end of the day… it’s the old story. Testing is crucial. Marketing by numbers and data is how you really make money.

More on this in the future!

Good Luck!