Major Corporations Vs Hole-in-the-wall Companies?

I dove into the idea of starting affiliate marketing a few years ago, but I kind of got intimidated and chickened out. However, I recently came across an ad for Home Depot and how they have a fairly decent affiliate marketing program. When I was looking into affiliate marketing before, I was mainly looking into small online businesses that I had found on review sites...But is it better to start off with larger organizations?

I have to admit that I would feel better going with a company that is well-known, but I wouldn't be surprised if their program did not have as high of a payout as some smaller business do. Their programs may be more well-known, so they probably have the ability to pay less. What is your experience in choosing small companies versus larger and more well-known ones? Which should I start with? Thanks in advanced.

 

It makes sense for larger companies to have affiliate programs even though they have deeper pockets for advertising budgets - No matter how big you are, you can't dominate all the SERP listings on the first page of search results. Google will always try to show a variety of sites, and not let one or two take up all the slots. That's where affiliates can potentially come into play. Even on platforms such as AdWords, you're saturating the space more if you and a bunch of affiliates of yours are all advertising on AdWords on your behalf. You could not get that kind of coverage on there alone.

The other benefit to you is, depending on how you are marketing their products, you can leverage their brand to build customer trust. I've seen professional cooks offer some great cooking instruction on their blogs as well as recommended appliances and tools, which they then link back to places like Amazon where their readers can purchase them too. It depends on how you word it, if you are up front with them and explain to them that they can support your blog by purchasing through your affiliate links without any additional cost to them, then it sounds more like a win-win situation. You curated the product selection for them and showed them how and why these were the best choices, and they can thank you back by purchasing them for themselves and sending you a commission.