|
Computer Help
|
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate Marketing is a great way to develop a business online without
necessarily having your own website or products.
In simple terms, the affiliate earns a commission reselling other companies
products or services. Affiliate programs may be the easiest online business to
start running.
Affiliate programs are a great way to get started in an online business. Some
Affiliates are making fabulous incomes from affiliate marketing, whilst others
are happy to simply supplement their income with the additional commissions.
Affiliate marketing is where you can sell another company's service or product
and make a commission on every sale or lead. You do not even need to build a
website or handle the transaction. Your job is to drive traffic (customers) to
your affiliate link.
An affiliate link is a special URL code that will identify customers coming to
the company's site from your advertising. It will likely be the website address
with a code attached to the end.
Some affiliate use data feeds.
Affiliate data feeds are provided by merchants to affiliates to better promote
and sell their products. Data feeds are converted into individual products and
include descriptions, links for images, links for visitors to click, pricing and
more. The affiliate can take the information in the feed and build individual
pages for each product, or put multiple products on each page.
An affiliate data feed may also enhance a site that already has some sort of
specific content. For example, a site concerned with business news, or advice
for business might work well with the Betty Mills data feed. Utilizing an
affiliate data feed, means your site will have more exposure on the web through
search engine results, and the higher number of pages published.
The first is basically a click-through program... whereby anyone who
clicks-through on the link is paid a referral or click through fee. It is pretty
simple, if an affiliate displays your banner, text link, or button and someone
clicks through that link, you pay your associate a small fee (usually between
$0.05 to $1.00 depending on your product and your margins).
The second method is a pay-per lead program. The affiliate is paid for
each "lead" they send you. The affiliate can post a form at his site for you,
and for anyone who fills out the form and submits it, you pay a referral fee to
the affiliate for that lead. Or your affiliates display a banner, text link or
button to your site and if someone clicks through they are presented with a form
they can fill out. That form can be anything… a request for more information
about a product, a request for a quote, or do something like downloading a trial
version of a software program. Regardless of what the visitor is asked to do...
your affiliates are paid for each lead they send you (or each time a form is
submitted).
The third method is a revenue sharing program. This is by far the most
popular type of Affiliate Program. Basically you are offering your affiliates a
portion of the profits on everything that is sold.
Reseller programs
A reseller program is a phrase sometimes used to describe an affiliate program.
Strictly speaking, it's a bit different.
A reseller buys products in bulk and resells them, collecting the money from the
customer.
In contrast, an affiliate does not handle the product and the money goes to the
merchant, who pays the affiliate a commission.
Many web hosts have reseller programs.
|
|
Computer Help
|
