Affiliate Program Basics

Affiliate Program Basics


Affiliate Program Basics

The affiliate program is a ground floor opportunity. All you have to do is send visitors to your affiliate website by placing a text link or banner on your website and receive a commission for each sale, without the hassle 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 that sells thousands of products and services.

One of the first affiliate programs was run by the mega-bookstore Amazon.com. They still have the largest affiliate base on the net, although it may not be the best affiliate program for many! with over 600,000 affiliate websites.

Affiliate programs are generally offered on sites that sell goods or services, although some affiliate programs reward other types of transactions, such as having a visitor sign up for a free newsletter or download.

Some affiliate programs pay per lead rather than per sale, in other words, you bring them a lead and they pay a fixed "finder fee" for the opportunity 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 the visitor makes a purchase, you get a percentage of the sale as commission.

Lead Pay - You are paid a one-time fee for generating a lead for the merchant. Typically, you are paid between $ 2 and $ 5 if the referring visitor completes an application.

Pay per click - You get paid for every visitor you send to the online merchant regardless of any purchase or sale. Typically, businesses pay between $ 0.05 and $ 0.15 per click.

Two tiers: You get a commission on the direct sales you generate and you also get a commission on the sales generated by the affiliates you recruited. Typically, businesses pay a 25% commission on direct sales and 5% on sales generated by their affiliates.

Reward: You get a one-time payment of the search engine fee for the visitor you refer. You will not receive commission for future purchases made by the customer.

When you join an affiliate program, you will be provided with a specially formatted URL (links) that you must use to link to the affiliate provider's site.

This will allow the affiliate provider to monitor the traffic to your site and pay according to the type of affiliate program.

The benefit of an affiliate program

You just need to drive traffic to your affiliate site. Write some articles and provide some links.

You don't need to find or deal with brokers, wholesalers, inventory, order processing, shipping and handling, customer service, technical support, handling returns, warranties, employees, etc.

An affiliate doesn't even have to be present, your site will keep making 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 does the system work?

Many affiliate programs pay a commission based on a percentage of the income generated by the purchases made by visitors who come from your website.

For example; if you participate in an affiliate program that offers a 25% commission and

If you send a visitor who buys $ 100 worth of products, you just earned $ 25 in commissions.

The commission rate itself can range from 20% to 50% + in the case of intangible products like e-books or website subscriptions.

Affiliate programs vary widely in terms of overall quality, reliability, commission, statistics, the amount of help the business site offers to market the products or services it sells, etc.

By thoroughly understanding an affiliate program, you will minimize the risk of not getting paid and maximize your potential earnings.