by: Shanon Lewis

What is an affiliate program? Everyone who surfs the web has come across affiliate programs. You may have seen a banner on a website that says, “click here”, and once you do, you get access to whatever’s being promoted. Or you could click on a link in an email you’ve received. You’re using someone’s affiliate program.
Basically, the company that sells the product sets up an automated way for people to be paid a set amount to help them promote their products or services. The links send you to the company’s website where you can buy the product. The owner of the originating website or email gets a fee for taking you there.
The bookstore Amazon was the first company to heavily promote affiliate marketing on the internet. Although this type of marketing is ideal for businesses that only operate online, it’s also become popular with businesses that have both an online and bricks and mortar presence.
Affiliate programs are an ideal way to make your web site profitable. With the huge range of affiliate programs now available, there’s almost bound to be something to suit you and your website.
How it works
Perhaps you’ve created a website about the city where you live. People find your website while searching for information about your city. Once they’ve read your pages they check out your recommendations. They might click a link to book a flight there. You get paid a commission. Then they clink your link that points them to somewhere they can book a hotel room. Another commission for you. Then they might want to buy a guide-book or street map. Yet another commission.
Or perhaps you have a website connected with your hobby. Maybe you want to share your enthusiasm about the crafts you do. Your website could point people towards suppliers, books…

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by: David McKenzie

A good way to tell if the affiliate program you belong to is
serious about their affiliate program commissions is the
percentage they are paying you. If someone is offering you 10%
commission, and they are keeping the rest, then you need to ask
yourself “Should I really be in this affiliate program?”.

An affiliate program I have recently joined called ‘E-Book
Marketing Explained’, pays out 45% commission to their
affiliates and another 10% to the 2nd tier. That’s 55%! They
only keep 45% and it’s from this that they take their costs.
Either they’ve gone completely mad or they are very smart!
I suspect they are very smart.

By paying such high affiliate program commissions they are
attracting many affiliates to their programs. This means they
can sell a higher volume. With a higher volume of sales they
can afford to give away such a high commission.

Because they are giving so much away to their affiliates with
high commissions it shows they are supremely confident in the
worth of their product or service and its ability to sell
itself. Their product or service is that good.

The affiliates are doing all the pre-selling, all the hard
work, getting the eyeballs at their web sites. You want to get
paid for it. Do not accept 10% commission rates. Set yourself a
standard of nothing less than 20% and make sure that the 20% is
more than just a couple of dollars.

It is with the big-percentage payers where you can make some
decent commissions. The 40%-plus hitters. These BIG affiliate
program commissions are the ones that will see your bank
balance explode each and every month.
About the Author

David McKenzie of http://www.brisney.com For great
ideas on promoting your web site or marketing your affiliate
programs subscribe to our Free twice monthly newsletter by
sending a blank email to mailto:brisney@brisney.com

…

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by: Paul Siegel

Affiliate and other cooperative programs are announced almost
daily. Website owners are flocking to these programs. Enthusiasm
is high. But………why not compare and evaluate first?

The following checklist was prepared from the point of view of one
seeking a program to affiliatae with. But it can also help a program
initiator compare current programs in order to make his better.

A. Does the Program Offer a Strategic Fit to Your Business?

1. PROGRAM PURPOSE - Define in broad terms
2. COMPLEMENTS YOUR PURPOSE - Does it help you better
realize your website long-range goals?
3. VISITOR LEARNING - Are your visitors interested and will
the
program help them learn?

B. Do You Trust the Business Initiating the Program?

4. SUCCESS - Does the business have a history of successes?
5. BELIEVABLE ADVERTISING - Does it promise impossible
rewards: get-rich-quick and MLM schemes? Or is it honest and
realistic?
6. REPUTATION - What does the business literature tell you about
their past operations?
7. WHAT CLIENTS SAY - Contact current clients and ask for
their opinions. Would they recommend this business
organization? Are they benefiting from it?

C. Is the Program Well Designed?

8. AFFILIATE QUALIFICATIONS - Are they signing up
everyone? Or are they being picky? Picky is better.
9. AFFILIATE RESPONSIBILITIES - Better, too, if there are
specific responsibilities. Are affiliates asked to do
promotion, communication with customers, sales?
10. INITIATOR RESPONSIBILITIES - Does the outfit offer help
in promotion, sales and after-sales support?
11. PAYMENT & TERMS - Is there a fee or commission
structure? How frequently are payments made? Does affiliate
get credit for future sales?
12. TRANSACTION TRANSPARENCY - How frequently are
transaction reports made? Are transactions independently
checkable by the affiliate? Is there a third-party audit?
13. CONFLICT RESOLUTION - Is there a SIMPLE method for
resolving conflicts?
14. RETURN TO SITE - Is there a simple way for a website
visitor to return to the site of the affiliate after a
transaction is executed?

D. Will You be Part of a Community?

15. COMMUNICATION MEDIUM…

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by: Albert Hallado

Affiliate Program is a ground floor opportunity. All you have to do is send visitors to your affiliate web site by placing a textlink or banner on your website and receive a commission on each sale, without the complication and expense of selling anything yourself.

Instead, you earn a commission for producing a ransaction. Affiliate programs, also known as Referral Programs, Associate Programs, Profit Sharing Programs or Reseller programs, give affiliates the ability to create an online business selling thousands products and services.

One of the first affiliate programs was run by the mega- bookstore, Amazon.com. They still have the largest base of affiliates on the net although they may not be the best affiliate program for many! with over 600,000 web sites being affiliated.

Affiliate programs are generally offered by sites selling goods or services, although some affiliate programs reward other types of transaction such as getting a visitor to sign up for a free newsletter, or a download.

Some affiliate programs pay per lead rather than per sale, in other words, you bring them a prospective customer and they pay a fixed “finder’s fee” for the chance to market to that customer.

This is a typical arrangement for affiliate programs in the insurance, real estate and credit card industries, for example:

Types of Affiliate Programs

Pay per sale: If you refer a visitor to the online merchant’s site and if visitor makes a purchase you get a percentage of the sale as commission.

Pay per lead: You get paid a one-time fee for generating a lead for the merchant. Usually you get paid $2-$5 if the visitor you referred fills out an application.

Pay per click: You get paid for every visitor you send to the online merchant regardless of any sale or purchase. Usually companies pay $0.05 - $0.15 per click.

Two-Tier: You get commission…

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by: Pavel Lenshin

Every off- or online business has a target of growing its market share. Under all other equal conditions the percent of the market, occupied by a company, means certain level of recognition, brand, exposure and, therefore, sales and income.

For small business owner a shift from 0.01% internet market share to 0.04% may result in tremendous four times income growth, the problem is in the limits of resources this particular owner has access to. Usually they are weak enough to allow such expansion at their own cost.

Help may come from two massive marketing instruments: - viral marketing; - business partnership based on outsourcing necessary resources.

Today we are going to speak about latter instrument of gaining exposure you deserve.

Business partnership is an agreement between two or more legal entities to cooperate together in order to reach mutually beneficial results. By extrapolating such statement into a framework of gaining market exposure, we can narrow this meaning down by focusing on uniting promotional efforts for reaching mutually beneficial results.

In practice the owner of affiliate program with the aim of gaining extensive market exposure attracts fellow marketers to promote the owner’s(s’) product(s) for a reward usually in the form of commission from retail price per sale. A commission for popular info products may vary from 5% to 70%.

Promotional materials (like, endorsement letters, reviews and articles) can greatly assist your partners in promoting your product as highly effective pre-selling tools.

The dilemma of joining affiliate programs

The most common mistake beginners do is registering with all possible and impossible affiliate programs they see in hope to promote them all and collect all the money they were promised to get on the page of respective affiliate program owners.

In dominating majority of cases they end up with wasted time and money. The reason is simple, they don’t have…

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by: Angela Wu

No product… not even a product idea. What’s a would-be
online entrepreneur to do?

For many beginners, affiliate programs seem like a dream
come true: earn a commission selling another company’s
products or services. No need to create one of your own!
What’s even better is that you only have to place a couple
of banners or links on your website, and this hot product
will sell itself! Right?

No. Just like with any other online business, earning money
from affiliate programs requires education and experience
with Internet marketing. Affiliate programs are a great
way to learn the basics of marketing online. Although it’s
the rare person who makes a significant full-time income
from them, many people find that they provide an excellent
supplementary income stream.

Many newbies to the ‘net are so eager to get started that
they sign up with every affiliate program that looks good
to them. They advertise like crazy, often spend hundreds
of dollars — only to be disappointed at their complete
lack of sales.

So what does it take to make money with an affiliate
program? Here are a few key tips …

__Make Smart Choices.

To get started, choose only one or two high-quality
programs that are a good fit with your website audience.
For example, if you’re running a crafts website, don’t
advertise technical software.

One or two programs will provide you with plenty of work
to begin with. More than that and you may find yourself
frantically trying to promote too many and having little
success. It’s better to start earning money with a
couple of good programs first, then gradually add
additional income streams later on.

You may also find, over time, that your audience responds
to a certain type of product and not to others. Test
different offers to see which ones your audience like
best.

__Don’t Rely on Your Downline.

2-tier affiliate programs offer additional commissions
everytime someone in your ‘downline’ makes a sale. Your
‘downline’ are those people you refer to the program who
also become…

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