Paying to be an Affiliate? Yes or No
I am curious if other people at WA pay to be an affiliate. The reason I am asking this question is I am pretty happy paying minimal fees to represent products.
I did not have much success belonging to various companies like Amazon, or some others, because they told me I did not have enough content on my website for me to represent them; mind you I made a sale with Amazon within the first three months of having their links on my website, but that still was not good enough to be a member.
My niche is health and wellness, I pay to be a premium member at WA and don't regret that choice at, just like I 100 percent don't regret being a member of Herbalife, another company I pay to belong to, and with these memberships I have a lot of resources to help me.
The one freebie that I belong to is Total Gym, however, I am extremely familiar with this product as I sold it when I worked at a telemarketing center.
Taking WA's advice I have sampled various products and I am now thinking of belonging to another company that charges, it is called It Works, before I make my final decision, I just wanted some feedback.
Please let me know what you do and if it is working for you.
One can buy Herbalife products from a distributor and not join the business, if one just wants the products. So "joining" Herbalife means joining the business.
One can join WA and be an affiliate and earn commissions, without paying to join.
Would I pay for premium even if WA did not have an affiliate program. You bet I would! The affiliate program is free. It is optional for both free and paid members.
We should all have a choice to buy products and services and/or to participate in a company's affiliate program at no further cost.
Monica, I recently wrote an article about Herbalife on my site. ~Jude
A program like Herbalife is more of a network marketing kind of situation (or multilevel marketing) where the only ways to get paid are either by selling the products directly to others, or by recruiting people.
Although we pay a monthly membership here at WA I don't believe it to be a network marketing situation as they don't have an upline/downline scenario, i.e., the multilevel aspect. Further, there are plenty of members here who have never referred anyone to WA and still make very nice incomes from outside niches. So no recruitment or selling of WA is needed to make money using the techniques we are taught. Also, WA has a pretty comprehensive starter membership where people don't pay any fee and can still earn commissions.
I remember from your previous post that you use the products from those network marketing companies and love them. So that probably makes it worth the monthly fee for you. And if you are able to recruit others, that makes it even better.
Generally speaking, with traditional affiliate programs, i.e., Amazon, ClickBank, etc., I would be reluctant to pay a monthly fee unless they offered something very worthwhile for the fee like WA does. The training and support here are extremely valuable and justifies the fee.
I am not in any way knocking network marketing arrangements. It's just a different business model.
Best Regards,
Jim
I believe there are programs out there such as the WA that promote an affiliate program, but with other items that can be associated to the monthly charge or initial charge.
Here we pay for hosting, training essentially that I see.
Its like be in an MLM and required to purchase product to be a member. To me that is forced sales. I know if you sell a chevy, you should be driving a chevy, but as for many folks, beginning out and ask or forced to purchase something to promote that product is a little strange to me.
Just my opinion.
Thanks.
Overall my feelings are as long as it is a nominal fee I am not too worried about it. Even with Affiliate window that $5 went into my commission pool anyway so I will get it back when I reach payment thresholds.