Direct Matches - Affiliate Programs Article - Internet & E Commerce Affiliate Revenue Articles

	1888 Articles Home \| Internet & E Commerce Articles \| Affiliate Revenue Articles	Affiliate Revenue RSS
Direct Matches - Affiliate Programs

Direct Matches calls itself ‘The business Space’. I would say this is an accurate description in every possible shape and form. It clearly makes it owners a great deal of money and if used correctly can be a powerful business tool for the likes of us.

Author: Matthew Jones

Article Tools:

It has one of the most advanced/complicated affiliate programs I have ever seen. With a training program and all!

Before I go into more detail about the affiliate program and other options available it is important to note that to make money from the affiliate program you must become a paid member. The minimum cost for this is $9.95 per month. I did not do this simply because if I paid the signup fee for every program I joined I would be in serious debt! (being a reviewer of affiliate programs). Generally affiliate programs that you pay to sign up are not worth the hassle, but there are other free things about Direct Matches that you should know about.

As a free member there are several tools available to you. Below is a screen shot of the ‘Pixel Ad’ section. Here you can post a tiny picture which links to your site. If you ‘upgrade your membership’ you can post slightly bigger pictures/logos.

I am yet to see any benefit from posting my ad. The actual Pixel Ad section is currently 2 pages long and each page contains about 5 times the amount of ads shown in the screen shot, so there are pretty low changes of someone click your ad!

There is also a forum where paying and free members alike can promote their business. The good thing about this forum is that the users are ‘highly targeted/relevant’. They are all out to make money online and so will probably be interested in what you have to offer. They may also have expertise and will be able to offer you some good advice.

If you look at it the other way most of the users already have a program to promote and so are not interested in what you have to say. The forum doesn’t seem to be that busy either, many of the posted topics have little/no views and hardly any replies.

Blog

You are given to option to start a free blog to promote your business/affiliate program. I see little use in this, after all why not just start a free blog that everyone can see at a place like Blogger?

Yet another free feature is the ability to post classified ads. These involve you entering the URL of the site you want to promote (could be an affiliate link) and adding a short text description of the site. They are posting on your profile and in the ‘classifieds’ section for other members to see. Like most of the free features here there are small benefits, but how many of the members are actually going to browse the classifieds section looking for a site to join?
not many.

There is a networks feature which “allows you to create and manage your own network”, but surprise surprise, this is for paying members only.

The final feature available to free members is using ‘events’. To be honest this is just the ‘Classifieds’ section wearing different cloths. You post a URL and a description and it goes on display for all members to see. You should technically post ‘an event’ but it would be easy to word your classified ad slightly differently and get away with it.

The tool I found most frustrating was the email. As soon as I joined I went around adding people as my contacts, which I was pleased to see could be done extremely easily. (I added 200!). You can send a group mail to up to 60 contacts at a time; but to my dismay I then discovered that the ‘group mail feature’ is only available for upgraded members. I wasn’t about to go around sending emails 1 by 1 to 200 people so I just gave up.

That finally brings me to the actual affiliate program. As I mentioned you can only make money with the affiliate program if you pay to have your membership upgraded, which I did not do. From the look of things there could actually be some potential here. The affiliate program can be found in the ‘back office’ section where there are numerous tools including training and marketing tools. The annoying thing is that you cannot even see these tools without paying so I cannot tell you how useful they are. I’m afraid that’s one step I can’t take for you.

Conclusion

I can safely say the free option for Direct Matches is not an ‘internet scam’. If you use all of the free tools available you can make it just about worthwhile. Despite not ‘group mailing’ my contacts I did receive a couple of suggestions of sites to review which was helpful. As for the paid option there is only one way to find out, but given the professional layout of the site I highly doubt they are out to swindle you. Whether you can make it worth your cash is a different matter entirely. Some of the paying Directmatches members assure me that they do make good money with the affiliate program and I am inclined to believe them.

About Author

http://affiliatescamguide.com - A Guide to Affiliate Program Scams. Scam or Not? Want to know if something is a scam? Just ask! I will research it and post my conclusion within 48 hours!

Article Source: http://www.1888articles.com/author-matthew-jones-2551.html