Affiliate Marketers Ask, “Do I Just Trust That I Will Be Paid?”

This is a guest post by Super Affiliate Jonathan Kraft. Enjoy the read!

When it comes to affiliate marketing, often people are scared to sign up for a program and sell a lot of products for the company because they’re afraid that they won’t get paid. In fact, I find this to be one of the more common questions I’m asked, “How do you get paid?”

While it may seem a simple question, it’s an important one to address.

The world of Internet Marketing is a confusing topic for many people who are new to it. A confused mind most often does nothing, so in an attempt to de-confuse some minds, this article will cover some of the more basic money-related questions in affiliate marketing.

How do I get paid?

How do you get paid at your job? Do you get a direct deposit, or does the company send you a check every 1, 2, or 4 weeks? Affiliate marketing is no different.

Most often, you will start off getting paid by check directly from the company. However, as time goes on, and you earn more on a monthly basis, the company may offer you the ability to have money directly deposited into your bank account or PayPal account. PayPal or direct deposit are excellent options which should be considered (if they are offered to you).

If you want to know whether or not the company offers a direct deposit of some kind, just email the manager of the affiliate program and find out. Also ask what level you have to be at in order to get directly deposited commissions.

When do I get paid?

The timeline of payment on affiliate programs can often be a bit different than in a job. In a job, if you are paid monthly, you are most often paid at the end of the month, for the hours you put in during the month.

In affiliate marketing, you may market a product today, and depending on the product or service you are marketing, it could be 90 days before you get a payment. This should not be a cause for alarm, and if you don’t get a check, you will want to look into the terms and conditions of the affiliate agreement to possibly find out why.

In other words, don’t freak out if you’re not getting paid right away. Just realize that the payment terms may take anywhere from 30-90 days.

The reasons for this vary, and have a lot to do with checking for fraud, refund policies, time to deliver the service (if you’re selling some kind of service), and more. However, ask the affiliate program manager what you can do to get paid sooner or more frequently.

Do I just trust that I will be paid?

Again, going back to the real-world example of a job, the question is: ‘do you just trust that you will be paid in your job?’ Affiliate marketing is not really any different than a commission job. (It’s just more fun because you can do it from home in your pajamas!) The only thing that you should be aware of is tracking your commissions to be sure you are paid properly.

It can be difficult to track the exact affiliate program commissions you should be earning.

This is because you are sending people to other web sites. Most of the time you have no administrative control over the website where the sale is actually taking place.

This means that over time, you will want to create relationships with the affiliate program managers of the programs you like. Make sure you believe in and trust them, and value the credibility of their company. If you do this, you can almost be sure that the affiliate program manager is watching out for your interests. Work to grow a relationship with your affiliate manager. The whole reason their position exists is to help affiliates succeed. There are lots of reasons many people assume that we cannot trust other people to do what they say they will do. However, in affiliate marketing, most companies are very interested in having you market their products, and they are very interested in paying you well for it, so that you will market even more of their products.

One thing to remember, even though TV would have us think otherwise, is that there are only 9 or 10 really mean and nasty people in the world. (They move around a lot.) You’ll generally be able to detect if one of them is the affiliate program manager for a program you’re a part of. If they are, you may want to run away from that program as fast as possible.

If you suspect you’re not being paid your affiliate commission due, here’s one way to determine it. An okay conversion ratio is 1%. This means that 1% of the visitors to your site actually make a purchase. Let’s pretend you have a web page that gets 1000 visitors/month.

It stands to reason that in a month’s time, provided that people are finding what they’re looking for on your page, that at least 2% will purchase the item you’re offering (as long as it’s related to what they’re searching for). This means that in our hypothetical example of 1000 visitors, you should be looking for somewhere in the neighborhood of at least 10 sales for the month. Your conversion may be much higher, but it should be at least 1%. If you notice a string of 3-4 months where your conversion is below 1% when it’s reported, you might want to start looking into the program a bit deeper, seeing how payment works, and trying to get in touch with other affiliates to see if their experience has been positive – or if they’ve been paid.

These are some simple questions, but hopefully they will help any confused minds to become unconfused, and willing to take a leap into the new (and profitable) affiliate marketing arena.

Internet affiliate marketing is a different world, but people are still people, and the same rules of business and trust apply. You have to trust that the majority of people, and the majority of businesses, are built upon solid principles.

Evaluate the products you are marketing (or wanting to market) with an eye for quality. Evaluate the affiliate programs you are marketing those products through with an objective mind, and an eye for credibility. If you are willing to place trust in the company, and you like their products, then you should be an affiliate for their products.

In the end, you won’t have to worry about being paid, or how you’ll be paid, if you know you can trust the people you do business with.

It’s what thousands of people around the world are doing right now, as you read this article. Many of them are being paid very well for their efforts, so why not you?

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Jonathan Kraft has been a full-time affiliate marketer since January 2004. Though he has been involved with a variety of projects over the years, his latest efforts are to help people learn how to buy gold and to help them save money in the process.