Reduce Risk by Diversifying

One of the major attractions of becoming an affiliate is the small amount of risk

involved. As an affiliate, you have little or no...

• product development expenses

• advertising costs

• inventory to maintain

• overhead expenses (salaries, physical location, etc.)

In other words, affiliates do not have millions at stake.

But you do have one big risk...

If a merchant or backend provider goes out of business, it takes you with it. Let’s

talk briefly about how to minimize this risk...

After you review the affiliate directories and backend providers, you should have

a good selection of programs.

So your best bet is to spread your business among as many programs as

possible that fit with your Site Concept. But there are some important

qualifiers to this policy...

1) If you represent 10 programs, don’t put them all on the same Keyword-

Focused Content Page. Work in only the few that are tightly relevant to the

content of each page.

2) Pick the best-of-breed from each category of merchant. For example, if you

plan on representing a Net marketing company, SiteSell would be the obvious

choice (ahem!).

3) Don’t choose too many programs. Tracking each program takes time, so 10

programs is probably a good balance. If any one of them dies, you don’t lose too

much.

4) Your best results will come from focusing on a smaller group of quality

programs (from within the 10). Their products must...