Making Money with Affiliate Programs ? Part I ECommerce Articles | May 24 Derwin James Camo Jersey , 2004 If you have a website and you are not involved in any of the ... of ... programs ... on the ... you are loosing great ... to make some extra income. As in the case of
If you have a website and you are not involved in any of the thousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, you are loosing great opportunities to make some extra income. As in the case of some top affiliate marketers this extra income might even transform into thousands of dollars. Affiliate program is one of the most effective methods of producing sales second only to direct mail. According to Forrester Research Joey Bosa Camo Jersey , a marketing research company, in this year 21% of all online sales will be generated from affiliate sites promoting affiliate products.
If you do your homework right Melvin Gordon III Camo Jersey , you too can earn handsomely from the correct use of affiliate programs.
What is an affiliate program?
The concept of affiliate program is based on the age-old business practice of referral service. This is quite common in many industries. An attorney, for example Philip Rivers Camo Jersey , gets a certain percent of commission if he refers a client to another lawyer.
Back in 1996 Amazon started the first widespread use of referral service on the Internet. If a client comes to Amazon and buy a product using a link provided by Amazon, from a website which signed affiliate partnership agreement LaDainian Tomlinson Camo Jersey , that site receives 10 to 15% commission from the sale. The Amazon Affiliate Program became so successful that it prompted others to follow the suit. Today, affiliate programs became ubiquitous on the Internet making them one of the primary methods of online marketing of products and services.
Affiliate Program can be defined as Internet marketing system where a company allows and helps third party websites Easton Stick Rush Jersey , called affiliates to post link and refer clients in return for a predetermined flat-fee or percentage-based commission.
Benefits of affiliate programs
Affiliate Programs became so popular because as a partnership it?s a win-win situation for both the program owner and the affiliates.
Benefits for program owners include:
Increase Sales The primary reason for most of the companies to adopt an affiliate program is the possibility of boosting sales. In fact, proper implementation of a quality affiliate program is capable of increasing sales dramatically.
Free promotion A successful affiliate program can easily become the largest traffic generator for the company website. Many websites receive major portion of their visitors from their affiliate links. To find suitable websites with required content in order to run a banner or link campaign is time consuming and require large resources; affiliate programs in comparison can resolve this issue often with a far smaller investment.
Increase search engine ranking Search engines Drue Tranquill Rush Jersey , Google in particular, calculate link popularity as one of the main factors in their ranking algorithm. Backward links from affiliate sites certainly help improving this.
Branding Thanks to its affiliate program Amazon banner links can be seen on numerous websites. Popularity of Amazon among the newcomers to Internet proves that Amazon was successful in creating its online brand name. No doubt Nasir Adderley Rush Jersey , omnipresent visibility of their logo on the affiliate sites definitely had a huge impact on the brand recognition of the Amazon. Offline companies had to spend billions of dollars of advertisement money to get similar results!
How about the affiliates? What are the benefits they get from an affiliate relationship?
No product or service to carry Online business with your own product or service might be rewarding, but it requires substantial investment from your part. With carefully chosen affiliate programs you can have your online business without the requirement of having your own products.
The investment is low as all you need is a website.
No need to have a merchant account Since you don?t carry your own products or services you do not have to go through the hassle of having a merchant account to cater your clients. Your affiliate program owner will do everything. All you have to do is supply clients through your designated link.
Possibility of residual income Many programs pay you a commission from the sales made to the customers generated from affiliates Jerry Tillery Rush Jersey , who have signed up as an affiliate following your link. This kind of affiliate system is called 2-tier system.
Visitor tracking system allows affiliate programs to pay you a commission when same visitor from your website makes repeat purchase.
Some affiliate programs that promote monthly or yearly subscription services pay a commission each month as long as customer referred by you stays subscribed.
Complement you website with added products and services If your site is dedicated to certain products or services, there must be other stuffs that go well together with your own products. It?s a good idea to seek out viable affiliate products of these items and promote through your site. Your visitors will love this and this will help building loyalty among your visitors.
Have new contents for your site many affiliate programs supply you with valuable marketing materials. Some of these materials can be nice addition to your site content bringing further value to your website.
Various Affiliate programs
There are two ways of running an affiliate program: The compan