aspecial_guide_for_affiliates.htm

Affiliate Marketing is one of the most popular and profitable business models on the Internet. With this effective model, you can make a killing online without your own products and even without your own Website. Small overheads, big profit margins.

On the surface, this looks like a great and easy opportunity, but for the marketer outside the United States, especially if you’re in South East Asia (SEA), there are hidden dangers below the clear, inviting waters of affiliate marketing. This article aims to zoom into the potential of affiliate marketing, the challenges and the payoff for home business owners in South East Asia, namely Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Brunei.

A Prickly Situation with Affiliate Networks

Although the affiliate marketing industry is wide open for everyone, as an international affiliate you may notice that not all doors open for you.
A few years back when I started, it was difficult to enroll in most affiliate programs, as they only accepted US or Canadian affiliates. Some affiliate networks like Clickbank (http://www.clickbank.com/) are notoriously difficult to get into. Since ClickBank is the largest marketplace for e-books, this is a severe setback for South East Asian marketers. E-book affiliate programs pay huge commissions, and the challenges here mean that you have a much smaller choice of affiliate products to promote.

Today, even some of the big networks like Commission Junction (http://www.cj.com/) and LinkShare (http://www.linkshare.com/) seem to shun registrations from countries in South East Asia, with Singapore being one of the few exceptions. In their defense, this can be pinned down to the large number of credit card fraud and other Internet-related scams in these third world countries. The high rate of fraud makes these countries a risk for the major affiliate networks.

Personally I have joined both networks and have been terminated by both when their policies changed. Neither bothered with an explanation or apology, and didn’t bother paying the balance of what they owed me. For them it’s just another day at business.

If you’re in Singapore, you’re probably spared from all these. If you’re in Malaysia or any other SEA country, try getting a Singapore address and register yourself as a Singapore affiliate. Of course, all checks will be sent to this address, so make sure you have some mail forwarding feature available. I recommend you try SingPost’s VBox (virtual P.O. Box) service that allows you to do this.

Of course, if you have a trustworthy relative or business associate based in Singapore, by all means redirect checks to their address. If you don’t, then getting a VBox would be the best work-around solution to getting into large affiliate networks. The way I see it, if you’re an honest marketer, there’s no reason why a few bad apples should spoil the whole barrel. If there’s no direct solution, then you have to work around the problem.

Affiliate networks can give hundreds of profitable revenue sources for a SEA-based affiliate marketer. However, if you decide this is too much hassle for you, you can of course seek other individual affiliate programs. A good source of these is www.AssociatePrograms.com where you’ll find friendlier, smaller, yet more profitable programs.

Undeveloped Local E-commerce Markets

In some third world countries, many people have not even heard of the Internet! Lack of proper infrastructure means lower penetration of the Internet to these markets. According to Internet World Stats (http://www.internetworldstats.com/), the latest penetration rates for Asian countries are:

Highest is Hong Kong with 69.3 %

Lowest is Myanmar, East Timor and Turkmenistan at 0.1%

Total for Asia is only 7% Internet penetration
So, the question is, how do you promote affiliate products to your local market? From personal observation, in Malaysia where I live, the majority of Internet buyers are in the "13-30" age group, and are comprised mainly of urban residents. Those above 30 use the Internet strictly for sending work-related email, and are not too tech-savvy.

In other parts of the country, Internet access is difficult to come by. Even though there has been a major thrust by the government to "e-nable" rural areas, I still see a good two to five years before there is significant interest in Internet Marketing in Malaysia.

So what can I do NOW to promote affiliate programs?

The answer is, quite frankly, to promote to US markets. Even though you may live in Indonesia or Malaysia, an affiliate marketer is free to promote any product they want, so choose something you can market to a US-based audience where many are familiar with e-commerce and where credit card fraud is managed.

Overcoming Language and Communication Barriers

While spending time participating and contributing in many online forums, I have come across the many questions on language and communication barriers, and the typical responses are:

Everyone speaks English anyway...

If they don't speak English, perhaps they should learn…

Why get into Internet marketing if they can’t speak English?

While the validity of these statements is beyond the scope of this discussion, it may perhaps bring into view a glaring reality on affiliate marketing on the Internet; almost everything is in English, or English based (Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art103.htm

Here are some important things to ponder:

How many affiliate programs offer multilingual support?

How many merchants offer multilingual after-sales support?

How many top merchants offer their sales pages and marketing tools in other languages?

How many offer training and reports in other languages?
Personally, I have no problems communicating in English. I speak English at home and with friends. However, there are many others who have a problem communicating in English. Quite frankly, as an English-speaking Internet Marketer, my best bet would be to promote to English-speaking markets like the US, Canada or Europe. That brings us to the next point of concern...

Plagiarism and Infringement of Intellectual Property

One popular way of promoting affiliate programs, as mentioned above, is by creating content rich Websites on a specific topic. The marketer then carefully inserts affiliate links and banners into this content in order to get clicks to their merchant programs. The main idea here is to publish useful information and recommend products or services based on that information.

For a non-English-speaking affiliate marketers marketing to a predominantly US market, these are some options:

Learn how to write and speak better English

Get someone else to write your Website content

Get Professional Translation service

Steal someone else's Website content
When I taught some of my affiliates to write original, useful content for their Website, most of them (against my advice) preferred the last option. Since it was the easiest, and requires almost no money, they adhered to human nature and tried to get something for nothing by ripping off other people's content

If you have done this before, then stop now! Original content is the essence of affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers live on original content, and ripping off their hard work is not only unethical, but also illegal. Please observe all copyright notices. If you are not confident of writing in English, these are my recommended steps for getting more useful content for any Website you want to create:

Ask permission from Website owner before using anything from his/her Website and use articles from authors who want their work to be published. You can get them at Article City (http://www.articlecity.com/) or IdeaMarketers (http://www.ideamarketers.com/).

Use RSS feeds to syndicate content to your Website.

Write in your native language and use a free translator tool like BabelFish (http://world.altavista.com/) or FreeTranslation.com (http://www.freetranslation.com/)
I do hope that we will see more affiliate tools and programs with language options.

Getting Payments in Your Country

Most affiliate program pay affiliates by issuing checks. Although many also have direct debit functions, these are severely limited to the U.S. International affiliates mostly have only one option - checks.

When receiving payments through checks, make sure you have a local bank that can accept check payments in U.S. Dollars or Euros. This is because most payments are made in these currencies. Some affiliate programs like Commission Junction can pay you in many other currencies as well, but there are not many of these. When seeking out a bank, look for one that converts foreign checks into your currency for a fixed amount, and go for the lowest payable amount. For example in Malaysia, some banks charge 10% of the check value, while others accept a fixed commission of around RM20. I finally found and settled with a bank that charges me RM10.00 for every foreign currency check.
The next step is to plan for the minimum payable amount. Most affiliate programs have a minimum payout amount of $20 or more. They also allow you to set higher payout limits, if you wish to. That means that as long as your commissions don't reach that amount, you will not get paid. I generally set a limit of USD50 for any affiliate program. This makes it very worthwhile to receive the check in the first place.

The Pay-Per-Click Quicksand

Back in 2003, pay-per-click (PPC) using Google AdWords was "the hot new thing." So I jumped on the bandwagon and started using Google AdWords. I bought an e-book called Google Cash to learn how to do it and spent around USD100 in the learning process. After wasting more money on failed campaigns, I hit it right on the spot and started making a decent profit margin (20%) almost immediately. The bottom line is that I spent USD100 on that promoting that affiliate program with PPC and made more than USD120. Looking back, it was more like I lost USD20.

Here's why - the actual profits took 2 months to completely clear in my bank account, while the PPC cost was payable immediately and I incurred credit card interest charges for the whole 2 months. Any affiliate commissions you have made are only calculated at the beginning or middle of the following month. After checks are sent, it may take up to 2 weeks for it to arrive in your mailbox, and another 3-5 weeks to clear at your local bank. So if you make a sale today, you only really get that money about 2 months from now!

If you're not careful, you may get stuck in a ‘quicksand’ that may leave you desperately broke. My advice is, unless you have backup capital to act as a buffer, stay away from too much PPC, especially using the Google Cash method. Using Pay-Per-Click or other expensive paid advertising is not a good long-term strategy. Only buy or spend for what you can afford to repay in the same month, regardless of how much money you expect to make. Remember that cash flow is more important to an international affiliate marketer than just profits. If you cannot afford to pay your credit cards' current charges, you might just end up broke.

If you insist on playing the volatile PPC game, then become what AdWords expert Perry Marshall calls a “value added affiliate.” This basically means that unlike the Google Cash method of sending visitors directly to the Website you’re promoting, you set-up a simple Website to collect your visitors’ email address, and then you promote the actual Website using email auto-responders and constant follow-up. To this you’ll probably need to add several additional tools, but it will be worth it over the long run:

Cheap Web hosting - Try http://www.accuwebhosting.com/

Auto-responders - Try Getresponse at http://www.sfidreamteam.com/rd/getresponse.html

Link Builders - Try Arelis at http://www.sfidreamteam.com/rd/arelis.html

Content Management System - http://www.mamboserver.com/
The Conclusion
Affiliate marketing is indeed possible for everyone, but as an international affiliate, it is up to you to learn to adapt to changing situations. It is beyond my power (or yours) to try and change the way the Internet works. All we can do is adapt to reality.

Before buying e-Books or software programs, look for free trials and try to determine if it is applicable to you. If a particular program seems applicable to specific markets such as the US without considerations for international buyers, find alternatives. Look for cheap ways to start advertising, and add more paid advertising options as your business, and more importantly your cash flow, starts growing.

About the Author: Gobala Krishnan has is a freelance writer for the IAHBE and a home based business entrepreneur in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. If you’re from Malaysia or Singapore and want more information on starting your own home-based business, visit his Website at http://www.homebizmalaysia.com/. To contact him personally, or to comment on this article visit http://www.gobalakrishnan.com.