In spite of the recession going on, having looked beyond ubiquitous hype that surrounds affiliate programs now days can be described as being in proper order. This can be attributed to the fact that till you wisely choose partners of yours, you might, in actual sense, lose loads of money through the way of having signed up and dedicated resources to the programs which may be better, along with being employed in a more efficient manner elsewhere.
Your time
Let us be conservative with regards to the estimates of ours concerning actual time that is spent in having located, checked out, and signed up for the affiliate programs, downloading graphics, link boxes, etc., in addition to imperative double checking regarding accessibility, traffic logs, sales stats, and much more.
There is a suggested format for going by. For the sake of simplicity, let it be assumed that you’ve gone ahead with signing up for twenty affiliate programs, that too, with each one of them making you statistical average of around $50 annually. Such a thing would result in to the following:
- If it goes on to take, say, an hour/week for having checked out online statistics of twenty affiliate programs of yours, that comes out to be 52 hours/year
- Go ahead with addition of another approximately twenty hours/year for having installed, encoded, and adjusted the affiliate links to web pages of yours, along with having downloaded new-fangled graphics, and followed newsletters of theirs. You can also implement the novel offers after having them checked out.
- Move further with addition of the other estimated twenty hours/day having answered email inquires with regards to affiliate services and products; in spite of your leads being referred to sites of partners finally, people might ask you regarding personal experience, that too, with personal experience pertaining to given service or product. They might also have various technical questions which range between ordering procedures and your partners’ reliability. As this is a personalized mail, people cannot be simply turned over towards ‘brain dead auto responder program’.
Total time
92 hours/year or 4.6 hours/affiliate program looks realistic if a bit of conservative attitude is taken in to consideration.
Your money
Even if sign-ups might be free, certain serious monetary overhead can still be had for being taken in to consideration.
Tracking software
This would be required for counter checking on traffic of affiliation partner and the sales stats of yours. While the tracking program might be obtained free of cost if utilized on the private websites, the commercial sites like yours might be the other matter, you would be required of having registered it for around $50. Checking procedures, installation, updates, and modifications might eat up the other $50. This can be termed as one of the most optimistic estimates.
The affiliate programs that are concerned with online charges and telecommunication might range between $0 and $200/year, or even more, based on tariffs and location of yours. However, let us assume a conservative estimate, i.e. of just $40/year with regards to each out of twenty programs combined. Affiliate programs concerned with bandwidth charges and web space would (as per assumption) amount to around $20/year for every program that is consolidated.
Costs total
Total costs amount to $160 per year. Remember that 1st time ‘acquisition fee’ for tracking software of yours can, by all means, get deducted from year’s overhead. Now, what would all this boil down towards? Having assumed the world that is statistically perfect, sum total of around $1000 in the revenues of $160 has us left with around $860 in terms of net profit prior to taxes. To obtain this, you would have moved ahead with having worked for around 80 hours as expounded above), which would give you overall average of around $9.35/hour. Hence, you would, in actual sense, be going on slaving away with < $10/hour. On condition, let such a thing be repeated, which would state that you would actually go on to make statistically defined fifty bucks/program that seems of being very doubtful in itself.
The analysis goes for showing that:
- There is absolutely no need of having held breath of yours relating to the money made by you from them
- It would just pay off for having worked with the affiliated programs if staying in focus is continued with.
Do not be indiscriminate. If you happen to sell apple carts through internet, affiliate partnerships presenting apple peelers might seem of being relevant enough with regards to specific clientele of yours for having made you some good bucks on side. Contrary to this, promotion of the diapers, programs of website translation, and cheap ‘Caribbean programs’ would certainly not. Hence, go on to have stayed focused. Less is definitely more here.