AFFILIATE MARKETING

What is an affiliate?

An affiliate is a type of marketing tool where an Internet business rewards
someone by paying them a certain amount of money for bringing traffic, a sale,
lead or click through to their Internet business. Sometimes referred to on a
website as "traffic partners", "referrals", "earn money",

Why use an affiliate?

Affiliates can help Internet business in many ways. If you own a website and
want to earn some extra cash you can sign up for another sites affiliate. For
example, if you sign up for smartbargains.com each time someone clicks on a
SmartBargains link, visits their site, and makes a purchase, you can receive up
to an 8% commission on the total purchases amount. Keep in mind they sell
Gucci purses for over $1000, not a bad profit! To sign up just look for the
"become an affiliate" link at the bottom of the page.
If you have an existing website you will want to look into offering your
customers an affiliate payment to link back to your website and you can set this
up and many more features we will discuss later.

Types of Affiliate Programs

There are generally three types of affiliates. The "pay-per-click", "pay-per-lead"
and the "pay-per-sale" models. Each one is unique and is suited for each type of
business needs.

The brief description for each type of affiliate program model is listed below and
suggested links to view the most popular pay-per-click models:

Pay-Per-Click
A "pay-per-click" model is an affiliate program where an Internet business pays
for every click that is made onto their website when a user finds it when typing
in a keyword. For example, you will sign up with Overture.com which uses the
popular search engines like Msn, Aol etc. Then you pick a keyword like
"computers" to use for people to find your website. When someone searches for
the word "computer" with Msn or Aol search engines your website will be on the
list of choices. Once a user clicks on your website you will pay Overture 10
cents for every click.
Here are some great examples of pay-per-click web sites:

Overture
• Acknowledged as the "King" of all Pay Per Click Search Engines
• Strong list of distribution partners, Yahoo, Msn, Aol etc.
• Minimum Cost Per Click is .10.
ePilot
• Receiving over 200 million monthly searches
• Very good Account Management tools and advanced reporting.
• Bid prices on keywords are very competitive and relatively high
Google Adwords
• High visibility with over 200 million searches per day.
• Top position will not always go to the highest bidder, "most relevant ads first"
• a good Keyword targeting system and increases relevance in keyword search.

Pay-Per-Sale
A "pay-per-sale" model where an affiliate is paid for bringing a sale to a
business. This is one of the more common form of affiliate programs, partly
because an affiliate is paid quite a lot whenever a sale is made.

Success Factors to remember when using affiliates

Relevancy
It is very important that the affiliates you choose for your website relate to the
content of the affiliates web site. An website that writes about books will,
undoubtedly, attract book lovers. Therefore, if that affiliate has an affiliate link
to Amazon (an online bookstore), it will generate more click throughs than an
affiliate link to a non-book related web site. Needless to say, relevancy plays an
important part in generating a the right kind of traffic to a merchant's affiliate
program.

What to look for in an Affiliate Program?

There are so many affiliate programs out there. So, what makes you decide on
the ones to join? Each affiliate program is unique in a different way. Factors like
the content of the business running the affiliate program, the payout rate,
integrity of the merchant and the relevance to your web site's content plays a
major role in deciding the types of affiliate program to join.

Perhaps, the number one factor in considering which affiliate program to join is
the integrity of the merchant. More important than the payout rate itself? Yes! A
honest merchant who pays $0.10 per click through is better than a merchant
who does not pay for his affiliates which "promises" $0.50 per click through. So
how do you decide on the integrity of the merchant. One tell tale sign, though
not foolproof, is the number of affiliates who have joined his affiliate program.
The greater the number, the less likely the merchant will cheat on you. The
reason is because there will not be so many affiliates joining his program unless
it is a paying affiliate program. Of course, the better way is to inquire from the
affiliates themselves. Questions to ask maybe, "Has the merchant ever defaulted
on his payment?, "Is the merchant always late in paying the affiliate?" and "Does
the merchant respond quickly to your inquiry within a reasonable period in
time?".

The next factor that you should consider in an affiliate program is the terms and
conditions as stated in the affiliate program prior to signing up. Make sure you
read the entire Agreement and have understood fully its intention before
signing up as an affiliate.

#1 Money Making Affiliate Website to Join!

Clickbank.com
You can make some serious money with this catalog of products you can sell on your own website! The product
choices are endless and so is the income!!
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