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| SiteDesign | Hosting | AffiliateMkt | SEO | Promotion | RSS |
Affiliate Programs Ease the Process of Making Money on the Net There are a Lot of Affiliate Programs out there that will pay you a Lot of Money for Promoting thei Products or Placing their Banners / Pop Ups on your Site.
The Money Earned from these affiliates will over time result into something much more than pocketmoney.
Before we Go In Depth into the Different Affiliate Programs that Pay You well, we would like to bring your Focus on Dream Merchant's own Affiliate Program. We are Selling eBooks of different Authors on different Subjects at Our eBook Store. Check them Out here - eBook Store.
As an Affiliate of our Store You get the Following -
You Get Your Money paid Once Your Balance is >= $10. You Get Paid thru Storm Pay or Pay Pal Check your Stats in your Member's Area. To Sign Up as Our Affiliate Please Click Here!
Now Since We have Finished with the Dream Merchants Affiliate Programme, Let's Discuss the concept of Affiliate Programs.
In General and the various phases involved, you will see how it can be easy, once mastered, to be able to generate sufficient income sitting right at home, and in your spare time.
Affiliate Marketing has been very HOT in the US for the last 6-7 years, but in the recent past it has moved to many other countries like Russia, Romania, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan - just to name a few.
It takes some hard work, and it also takes time to come out successful - but creating a campaign can be very satisfying, and to see it work, and then fine tune it - even better! So read on, give it some time to grow on you, and enjoy.
Every day there are more new products being launched, more businesses being taken online and more websites being created. Which effectively means that the opportunities for Affiliate Marketing will keep growing with time. And if you believe in being prepared for the future, it would be better if you got involved now so that you could reap the benefits when things really heated up.
As you proceed , you will notice it gets very interesting, figuring out and being part of the Affiliate Marketing world.
What is Affiliate Marketing?
To answer this question we need to understand the definition of “affiliate” - An affiliate is an associate or a partner.So in simple terms affiliate marketing means marketing by partners.
Let us illustrate how affiliate marketing works with an example.Let Look into a Company that sells eBooks online. The eBooks can be bought from http://www.money4net.com/store/index.asp. Go Ahead test it. The site Exists. When You Join this site as an Affiliate and are approved , you receive a “banner” (or text) with a special link from them which has appealing images.
As an affiliate, you insert these banners on your web site or your newsletter !
Customers who visit your web site click on the banner and are taken to Moey4Net eBooks through this special link - Some of these customers like the stuff on display and make a purchase. The Sale is traced by the website and you are credited for the purchase and you get a commission for it.
What has happened here? You, as their affiliate, have helped Money4Net get a new visitor to their web site and more importantly you have helped them get a relevant visitor who ended buying their product. In return for your services Money4Net has paid you a commission at a previously agreed amount.
The history of affiliate marketing
Many believe Amazon.com launched the first affiliate program on the Internet way back in 1996. A quick visit to their web site and you will see that Amazon claims to be the pioneer and the leader in affiliate marketing with nearly a million affiliates.Legend has it, Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, chatted with a woman at a cocktail party about how she wanted to sell books about divorce on her web site.
After that exchange, Bezos pondered the idea and thought about having the woman link her site to Amazon and receive a commission on the book sales. This was the impetus for creating the "first on the Web" Amazon.com Associates Program.
However, many Internet gurus believe that Bezos was not the first and that the adult content sites were first. In fact the adult sites are credited with many of the best (and worst) innovations. However what is beyond doubt is that Amazon operates one of the largest affiliate programs on the Internet.While Amazon is accepted as one of the major corporations benefiting from affiliate marketing, it is not very clear how well the affiliates fared. Most affiliates are privately held anonymous entities and there is no authentic source for affiliate earnings. We have heard amazing numbers being earned per month by individual affiliates (not corporations).
Now that we have a basic idea of what affiliate marketing is and we know that there is money to be made by becoming affiliates we need to move on to the next step.
What do you need to become an Affiliate?
You need to identify an affiliate program and register.
You need a web site, newsletter or PPC program to promote the merchant's products / services.
You need to find relevant customers and send them to the merchant's website through the Affiliate Link.
Before we proceed we need to understand a few basic principles in which most affiliate programs operate.Money for nothing and clicks for free !
Most affiliate programs are not going to pay you for spreading awareness, for advertising and for sending visitors who just window shop. They will pay you only on performance or action. This kind of marketing (and it is marketing) is called Pay Per Action (PPA), since the affiliate isn't paid for carrying the merchant's advertising link or graphic on his site, but only when a visitor performs a certain action (in over 90% of cases the action is that the customer has to make a purchase, in some cases the action could be a click, or lead generated though registration etc.).
Most websites, which offer affiliate programs, operate on a similar basis. In sum we learnt that: Affiliate programs are like partnerships and you, as an affiliate, are a re-seller of their products/services.
Affiliates generally pay per action, which in most cases is a SALE and in some cases is a Lead (through form submission).
You get a commission of this sale/lead at a predetermined percentage/amount.
The “Merchant” uses affiliate-tracking software to keep track of your traffic and commissions. These commissions are usually paid once a month subject to a minimum value. If you do not reach the minimum amount for the month, this amount is rolled over to the next month.
Why are Affiliate Programs so popular?
One of the reasons affiliate programs are so popular is that they offer a win-win situation for both merchant and affiliate.Merchant Advantage: The merchant's cost for advertising a particular product is limited (largely) to the percentage paid to an affiliate, and the merchant only has to pay when a purchase is actually made. This is much better than other forms of advertising, like banner advertising, where the merchant pays whether or not any purchase occurs.
Affiliate Advantage: The Affiliate stands to make some decent money, so long as enough visitors click on the affiliate links and make purchases. You don't have to go to the trouble of setting up e-commerce functions, take credit cards, or ship products; or get involved in fulfilment of orders. You just join some affiliate programs and let someone else do the "dirty work".If this sounds too good to be true, it's because it probably is. To be realistic, you need to see affiliate program income as a nice bonus to your main source of revenue, not the main source itself. To generate substantial income you need: (1) a lot of traffic, (2) merchants with generous payout policies, and (3) products well targeted towards the visitors who come to your site. The brighter side is that more and more people are taking their business online - and the number of online customers are also increasing by the day. So the future can only be bright for an earn from option like this one !
Understanding Commission Structures
Pay Per Sale: As discussed earlier this is the most common form of Affiliate Program payment. Affiliates get a commission only if a sale is completed amongst the visitors they have forwarded with their Affiliate link.There are a few additional details that you need to keep in mind while signing up for a merchant:
TRIAL PERIOD. Some merchants have a trial period for the product they are selling and the sale is assumed to be completed only at the end of the trial period (usually 30 days). In such cases the customers account is debited only after the trial period and hence you will also earn your commission only at this stage.
Such Affiliate Programs are rare - and these details will be clearly provided in the Merchant's Affiliate Agreement.
REFUNDS: Some merchants allow for refunds if the customer is not satisfied. In such cases the Affiliate also loses his commission if his visitor who purchased later returns the item of purchase.
COOKIE DURATION: One of the things to keep in mind in a pay per sale program is the cookie duration. Cookies are used to track your visitor and to figure out when a sale from your site is eligible for affiliate commission. Merchants set specific cookie time periods - from a few hours to a few months, some even use lifetime cookies. This basically defines the time length in which an affiliate will get credit for a sale.
Typically Pay Per Sale commission ranges from 5% to 30%. A general thumb rule: Popular products like books, music and electronic goods offer up to 15%. Niche products like utility software, financial services offer 15% to 30%. Small operators, with products that are generally single person created like eBooks, Sales Letter Templates etc, offer up to 50% commission.
Pay Per Lead: Affiliates get a flat amount for each qualified lead (customer) that is referred to the merchant site. In most cases, the visitor needs to fill a registration form for it to be considered a qualified lead. In some cases it might be a form to be filled with some details which would let the merchant follow up for a later date. The merchant would have the right to VOID illegal and invalid Lead commissions to make sure no leads are generated by the Affiliate him/herself with bogus data.
Pay Per Click: Affiliates get a fee for every unique visitor that is referred to the merchant site. The popularity of such programs has gone down considerably over a period of time since a large number of merchants were defrauded by affiliates artificially generating clicks.
Multi-Tier Model: Affiliates can get to sign up sub-affiliates in a tiered structure. As an affiliate you could get your site’s visitor to sign up for the merchants affiliate program. Once "your visitor” becomes a registered affiliate he could in turn send more visitors to the merchants’ web site. Some of these “new visitors”, referred by “your visitor”, may end up buying the merchants products. You as the first level affiliate earn a small portion of the sale in addition to the main Affiliate also earning for the sale. Very few programs are Multi Tiered - so watch out for them. When you see some you could recruit your Affiliate buddies to join this program and earn from their sales as well.
Hybrid: Some merchants offer a hybrid selection of pay-per-lead, pay-per-sale, pay-per-click and two tier commission structures.
Recurring Revenues / Lifetime Revenues: Some merchants offer affiliates lifetime or recurring commissions. This typically means that once you cause a sale through your Affiliate Link, any future sale by that person will automatically get you an Affiliate Commission. Such a program is very rare - Typically these are renewable monthly subscription services like hosting, magazines, etc. These programs are very good for affiliates as you are rewarded for your referral’s purchases for life !
Be careful with the Fine Print: Whenever you apply for a Merchant program, please make sure you read the fine print. Some merchants promote their affiliate programs with language such as "earn up to X% commission from sales on your site." They repeat this percentage over and over, giving the impression that this is what you will earn. In some affiliate programs, like Amazon.com’s, you get 15% commission only if the visitor purchases that book without checking out any other pages in the Amazon web site. In other words, if your visitor views another page at Amazon.com, then comes back and makes the purchase, the commission is only five percent.
By now you would have figured out a lot about affiliate marketing and its nuances.
On the Next page We will Discuss about Different Affiliate Programs That you can Join which are tried and tested by our panel of Experts as High Paying and are the Best On the Net.
Additionally You could check our Blog on Different Topics. 10 Ways To Make money online - Dream Merchants Blog
How to Outsell Other Resellers and Become a Super Affiliate
How would you like to become a top-selling affiliate for whatever program you choose? Discover easy ways to gain an unfair advantage over your competition no matter what program you're promoting!
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