Affiliate Marketing and Aggregators I

Article Marketing

A low-maintenance income stream for e-business owners is affiliate marketing. Combine it with the Google AdSense Program and you have 2 solid cornerstones for your diversified Monetization Plan.

Affiliate marketing involves aggregators. Use this article (and the upcoming series) to get up to speed about the advantages and disadvantages of aggregators. Let's start with these 5 points…

1) Most small affiliate companies these days use an aggregator to manage their affiliate program. If you experience problems, they tend to happen with the smaller companies, not the aggregator. Many of the problems are the result of companies forgetting to update the links and banners after deleting a product or ending a special.

2) Using an aggregator means you'll be paid sooner (if you use more than one company associated with that aggregator). You'll reach the minimum payment threshold faster when you combine earnings from two or more companies.

Three more points to go…

3) It's very important to continually track successes and failures of the individual companies. If one isn't performing well, change a few things. If there's no improvement, drop it and use the ones that perform well. Some of the aggregators are very good at providing stats, while others offer less information. And most only provide stats at the merchant level, not at the individual product/service level.

4) Don't select an aggregator first. Find the company that has exactly the products you want to promote and think will sell well on your site. Then sign up for the aggregator that manages that company's affiliates.

5) See if an aggregator has easy-to-use tools for setting up links, and allows deep links to specific products. Also look for advanced reporting systems and responsive customer service. If you're using it for one specific company, then you may have to accept tools that are difficult to use, or a lack of advanced reporting, or lousy customer service.

Which Companies Are Aggregators?

Below is a list of the various aggregators, listed by size and popularity, followed by those for specific locations and then finally by some that aren't really aggregators, but work like it or are big enough to almost be an aggregator.

Large and Popular