Currently, there are numerous affiliate programs out there. Common types of them include CPC, CPM, CPS, CPA and other creative derivatives. On the one hand, such a massive existence of them creates great convenience for webmasters to monetize their websites. On the other hand, it makes some webmasters quite confused in face of so many choices and other webmasters eagerly to choose those that they assume will bring a largest return within a shortest time frame.

Then, how about the actual performance of those affiliate programs with a presumably largest return in a shortest time frame? Not quite satisfactory I have to say. The majority of webmasters actually haven’t received any payment from those programs at all. In order for us to achieve a better performance in affiliate advertising, I think it’s quite crucial we discuss what matters when we choose affiliate programs. In my opinion, there are at least the following critical factors that we have to keep in mind before we publish affiliate ads in our websites. Although some of them may sound quite basic to you, I insist to list them out since it’s right the basics that many of us forget with regard to choosing which affiliate program to participate.

1. The traffic of the affiliate program’s official website. By “traffic”, I mean not only the amount of traffic, but also the source of traffic and the quality of traffic. I believe you all know the importance of traffic amount quite well. But for the source of traffic and quality of traffic, we usually forget to commit our due diligence. If the majority traffic of the affiliate website comes from only one source, we may have enough reason to question the stability of its traffic. If most traffic of the affiliate program comes from traffic exchange programs, the traffic has barely any value and the affiliate program’s reputation is in serious doubt.

2. The reputation. Some affiliate programs have a relatively long history and accumulated a fairly large traffic base. However, a large part of their history is notorious. You may find my users complain about various issues, for example, payment delay, service unavailable, ads untargeted and so on. It this is the case, you’d better not participate in it at the very beginning, no matter how large the commission rate is.

3. Ad unit design. Some affiliate programs have very poor design in their ads. Even a beginner in web design may not feel comfortable when trying to appreciate their ads layout. Remember, if we don’t feel good for the ad unit, the visitors of our websites won’t, either. Thus, poor ad unit design may severely impact the Click-Through-Rate (CTR). It’s important that we don’t comprise on this just because of their attractive commission rate or other strengths such as short payment schedule.

4. The diversity of ad units is also very important. In this regard, Google AdSense is the most outstanding example. It has provided webmasters nearly all choices of ad units that one could think of, so that webmasters have a great flexibility to seamlessly incorporate Google AdSense into their websites. In fact, it’s quite common that webmasters use Google AdSense to better their websites’ outlook.

5. Anti-cheating technique. If the anti-cheating is not done quite well for an affiliate program, some “intelligent” guys could take advantage of any possible backdoors the affiliate programs to generate fake ad clicks without being caught. So those cheaters will receive payment although they didn’t generate any income for the affiliate company’s clients – those advertisers who let the affiliate company publish their ads for them. In the affiliate marketing field, the interests of advertisers, affiliate programs, and individual website publishers are closely tied together. If the interest of the advertisers is damaged, all stakeholders in the value chain, including you, will suffer in the end.

6. Chemistry between the affiliate program and your website. By “chemistry”, I mean whether the ads fit your overall content and style of your website. For example, if the website talks about article writing, you may not want to publish ads about commercial electronics. If your websites requires the user to fill in a long registration form, you certainly don’t want to pop-up ads to disturb your users.

7. Commission rate. Don’t get me wrong when I mentioned “commission rate”. Here I mean you should think twice before lured away by extremely high commission rate. Where does your affiliate income come from? Although it’s the affiliate company that pays you, it’s the advertisers that offer any amount of advertising budget, out of which the affiliate company distributes a share to you. You know, no rational advertiser is willing to pay one penny more than the advertising price determined by the market. If an affiliate program offers an extremely high commission rate, chances are, either it’s another case of business fraudulence, or the affiliate program is giving away money like an angel.

Of course, there are many other important factors impacting your decision with regard to which affiliate program to choose that I fail to cover here. However, it’s always more important to know how than to know what. As long as you know that you need to think more carefully than before when choosing a suitable affiliate program for your website, the probability of your success in affiliate marketing is much higher.

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Tue Jan 12, 8:05 AM

By Alexei Oreskovic

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc’s venture capital arm, Google Ventures, is bringing more partners onboard as the $100 million fund seeks to build upon the eight investments it has made in companies since its launch last spring.

Managing Partner Bill Maris said the fund had quietly begun to bulk up its ranks and is in the process of refining an investment strategy that has seen Google Ventures back start-ups in markets as diverse as biotech, cleantech and consumer Internet technology.

“There are full-time employees in the fund that aren’t publicly disclosed right now that are recent hires,” Maris told Reuters on Monday. The Google Ventures web site currently lists only Maris and Rich Miner as managing partners.

“As the team gets bigger I think we’re able to look at a broader and broader group of companies,” Maris said. And he noted that Google Ventures will be able to pick the right investment opportunities based on specific problems that the fund thinks it can best help address, rather than simply looking at broad investment sectors.

On Tuesday, San Francisco Internet start-up VigLink announced a round of funding from backers including Google Ventures and First Round Capital, as well as a handful of angel investors Reid Hoffman, founder of social networking firm LinkedIn. Representatives for VigLink said the funding round totaled $800,000.

The Google Ventures investment in VigLink, which actually occurred in June but was not announced at the time, gave Miner a board seat at the company. VigLink provides a tool to help Web publishers and blogs generate revenue by connecting the hyperlinks featured in their content with affiliate programs from sites like Amazon.com Inc that pay commissions for sales leads.

Miner told Reuters in a separate interview on Monday that he also sits on the boards of two other Google Ventures portfolio companies while Maris is a director at Adimab Inc, a biotech company that Google invested an undisclosed amount in October.

Miner would not disclose how much of the $100 million the fund has invested so far. According to Miner, Google Ventures has made a total of eight investments to date, though only seven of the investments have been publicly disclosed.

Google, the world’s No.1 Internet search company, launched its venture capital arm in March 2009, with the stated goal of seeking investment opportunities to maximize returns rather than looking for investments that strictly fit with Google’s strategic vision.

The fund has also invested in Pixazza Inc, a photo-based online marketing service and Silver Spring Networks, a company that uses technology to improve the efficiency of power grids.

“Looking at the opportunity we have to invest in 2010, we just think that it will be useful to have additional partners on the team,” Miner said.

“We’re coming out of a period of serious economic downturn, that’s always a great time for creativity to flourish and innovation to flourish and people to start investing,” he said.

(Editing by Lincoln Feast)

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