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Affiliate Network
Browse through our informative and interesting reviews on affiliate
networks, affiliate programs and revenue generation.
Affiliate Marketing Program and Network
Articles
Browse through our informative and interesting reviews on affiliate
programs and revenue generation.
Current Reviews for:
 ChatDollars
Are you new to the concept of Affiliate
Marketing? This site aims to help you get a better understanding
of how affiliate marketing programs can help you generate additional
income!
Understanding Affiliate Programs
By Sharon Housley
Wednesday, November 10, 2004; 6:15pm EST
Affiliate programs are commonly misunderstood, in order to understand
affiliate programs lets start with terminology. For clarification
purposes, an affiliate is defined as any "referrer"
or website that promotes a product in an effort to earn revenue.
A merchant is defined as someone who owns a product and is sharing
revenues with an affiliate based on the affiliate's performance.
Affiliate programs can drive targeted traffic to your website.
There are 3 basic affiliate programs, though only the first
two are commonly used.
Pay Per Click - this is when an affiliate is compensated for
sending traffic to the merchant. (AdSense is an example of PPC
affiliate program)
Pay Per Sale - this is when the affiliate is compensated by
the merchant if the referral generates a sale or purchase.
Pay Per Lead - this is when the merchant agrees to pay for a
qualified (or sometimes unqualified lead), which is very uncommon
because it is subjective and up to the merchant.
Affiliate websites tend to provide information, entertainment,
and content services to their customers. The online merchants
sell products, goods and services online. These are programs
permitting affiliates to earn money based on the visitors to
your site who click through to another's website. Some pay a
token amount for the click through and others provide a percentage
of sales when a visitor "clicks through" to your site
and buys a product or service on the other party's site. This
could represent a value added service to your visitors.
Affiliate programs allow you to pay and track incentives from
other websites that send web surfers, leads or paying customers
to your website. Commissions based on purchases made by traffic
sent from the referring website can be paid. Besides a commission,
an affiliate can receive a flat fee, or other incentives for
all valid transactions it refers that generate a sale or lead.
Be careful that the affiliate's web page is not cluttered with
banner ads that may crowd out your link, or that be annoying
to customers. Affiliate programs enable affiliates to leverage
their traffic and customer base in order to profit from e-commerce
while merchants benefit from increased exposure and sales.
Commonly traffic to merchant sites is measured and affiliates
can clearly see conversion rates. Meaning, they track the percentage
of people they are referring, and how much of it results in
earned revenue. If the affiliate finds a very low conversion,
they will find a better way to monetize that traffic, quite
possibly with a competing merchant product.
In order to be a successful affiliate, the affiliate site needs
to either have tons of traffic or target a specific audience,
frequently one untapped by the merchant. It has been my experience,
the closer the affiliate site content resembles the merchant
products, the higher the likelihood of a good conversion rate.
Once you are committed to the idea of affiliates, the next step
is to determine the kind of tracking system you are going to
use. Sales can be tracked by HTML code, which is placed in a
shopping cart or on the 'order confirmation'/'thank you' page,
and cookies, which are created after the customers click on
a banner ad. Cookie killers have been a problem for the affiliate
industry. Software vendors have an advantage over other merchants
in that new technologies allow software developers to better
control compensation. Vendors can 'wrap' their software insuring
that their affiliates are compensated for referrals, even if
the customer downloads a trial version prior to purchasing.
Buy now buttons in the software have affiliate ids imbedded
in the download. Combined tracking systems have more success
than those that rely on a single tracking technology.
In order to develop a successful affiliate network, merchants
must realize that affiliates spend ad dollars on site, and product
promotion. If the affiliate is not compensated fairly they will
not remain in the merchants network. The bottom line is that
affiliate relationships are partnerships, when both sides feel
the situation is fair and equitable the relationship will be
a success.
About the Author
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net
a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless
messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found
at http://www.feedforall.com , http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com
and http://www.small-business-software.net |
