What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is one of the most popular forms of online business in recent years. Affiliate marketing involves at least 3 parties. The merchant, the affiliate and the consumer. Affiliate marketing involves the affiliate directing traffic to the merchant sites and this traffic will be made up of the consumers.
Affiliates will need to have their own websites, which are content rich and of high traffic flow. Affiliates will place a link to the merchant site in order to direct traffic to the merchant site. The merchant will then pay the affiliate accordingly to the terms that they have initially agreed upon. The agreement can be in the form of number of successful sales, number of visitors to the merchant sites and so on.
Types of Affiliate Programs
Pay Per Sale
This is probably one of the more popular forms of affiliate program. Basically when consumers visit the affiliate’s website, click on the link in the affiliate website to visit the merchant’s site and make a purchase the affiliate will earn a percentage commission of the sale.
Pay Per Click
These programs pay the affiliate based on the number of people who are directed from the affiliate website to the merchant website, i.e. clicking on the merchant site link on the affiliate site. Affiliate will still be paid according to the number of visitors they directed to the merchant site even of visitors did not make a purchase.
Pay Per Lead
This simply involves affiliates directing visitors to sign up and fill in information on the merchant site and the affiliate will be paid according to the number of signups.
Residual Programs
In pay per sale program when a visitors visits the merchant site through the affiliate site and make a purchase the affiliate gets a percentage commission. However in the future if this visitor visits the merchant site and make a purchase without going through the affiliate site, the affiliate will not receive any income. However in residual program, when visitors make repeated purchase without going through the affiliate site, the affiliate will still earn a percentage commission of the sale.
Pay Per Impression
These are placing advertisements such as banners or text links on the affiliate website. The merchant will pay affiliate according to the number of people who see their banners or text links.
What is an Affiliate Program Network?
Affiliate program network acts as a middleman between the affiliate and the merchant. The network brings people who are interested in being an affiliate and merchants who are interested in publicizing their sites through affiliate marketing together. Affiliate program networks help to track traffic that are directed from the affiliate site to the merchant site, making sure that merchants pay their affiliates accordingly and provide tutorials that help affiliates to be successful in affiliate marketing. Basically affiliate networks are responsible for all the administrative matters between a merchant and an affiliate.
How do I get started?
If you are interested to be an affiliate or find an affiliate the first step is to look for an affiliate program network. There will be a list of available affiliate programs, which caters to people who are interested in being affiliates. Merchants can also list their websites in the list with a brief job description.
Here is a short tutorial for affiliates:
http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/188/1/Affiliate-Program-Tutorial
