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Affiliate Program Basics
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 transaction.
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 on direct sales you generate
and also you get
commission on sales generated by affiliates you recruited.
Usually companies
pay 25% commission for direct sales and 5% for sales generated
by your affiliates.
Bounty: You get a one-time finder's fee payment for the
visitor you referred. You
will not get commission on any future purchases that customer
makes.
The Benefit of an Affiliate Program
Is that you just need to drive traffic to your affiliate
site. Write a few
articles and provide a few links.
You don't need to find or deal with brokers, wholesalers,
inventory,
process orders, shipping & handling, customer service,
tech support,
handle returns, warranties, employees, etc-
An affiliate doesn't even have to be present, your site
will keep earning
money while you're sick, on vacation, or just doing something
else.
Another advantage of being an affiliate, is that you do
it from almost
anywhere in the world..
How The System Works?
When you join an affiliate program, you will be given
a specially formatted
URL (Links) that you should use to link to the affiliate
provider's site.
This will enable the affiliate provider to monitor traffic
to your site and pay
according to the type of affiliate program.
Many affiliate programs pay a commission based on a percentage
of the
revenue generated by purchases made by visitors coming
from your website.
For example; if you're participating in an affiliate program
that
offers a 25% commission and you
send a visitor who purchases US$100 worth of products,
you've just
earned US$25 in commissions.
The commission rate itself can vary from 20% up- to 50%+
in the case of
intangible products such as eBooks or website subscriptions.
Affiliate programs vary widely in terms of overall quality,
reliability, commission,
statistics, the amount of help that the merchant site
offers in marketing the
products or services it sells, and so on.
By thoroughly understanding an affiliate program, you'll
minimize the risk of
not getting paid - and maximize your potential earnings.
About the Author
Albert Hallado Owner of
www.netbizreview.com. (Guide To Internet Based Business)
Albert is known for interviewing online business experts
and Helping Entrepreneurs
Doing Business On The Internet. |
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