With the advent of business bookmarking, earning profits is a goal not only for firms advertising their products and services on the web, but also for the common web user, through a program called Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing, basically, is a relationship or an agreement entered between two websites, with one site being the merchant’s website and the other being the affiliate’s site.
In this relationship, the affiliate allows the merchant to advertise his products on the affiliate’s site. The merchant, on the other hand, agrees to pay the affiliate in whatever method or payment term they have agreed into. This generally means easy income for the affiliate, as he/she would do nothing but place the retailer’s/merchant’s ad on his site. This would also prove to be truly advantageous for the merchant, as getting affiliates to advertise their products would be a less costly than hiring an advertising firm to endorse and market their products.
Affiliate marketing is considered easy, and is probably one of the finest ways to earn profits online, unless otherwise you are a businessman and would rather sell your own products online than advertise other merchant’s products on your site. However, even online retailers can benefit from affiliate marketing programs, since affiliate marketing truly works for both merchants and affiliates.
There are a wide array of modes on how a merchant would compensate the affiliate for his services, and for the webmaster, these methods simply translate to the method by which he would earn quick profits. Among the more regular methods of compensation are the pay-per-click method, the pay-per-lead method, and the pay-per-sale method.
The pay-per-click method is the mode most preferred by affiliates, since their site’s visitors would only have to visit the advertiser’s site for them to gain cash. Gaining good profit on affiliate marketing programs, however, does not depend so much on the compensation method as it does on the traffic spawned by your site. A website that can attract more visitors would usually have the greater chance of earning from affiliate marketing programs.
In this program, the affiliates play a crucial role. Affiliates are marketers who work on a commission or bounty basis. It is estimated that there are over one million affiliate marketers and they vary in size from a single individual or entity, to companies of several hundred, or even a thousand. Affiliate Marketers put up websites to draw communities of consumers. These communities are generally vertical or topic specific in nature and consist of chat rooms, blogs, and informational websites.
Affiliates attract thousands of interested users who are offered products and services that are in tune with their interests. Affiliates exhibit your ads to their website visitors in hopes that the visitor will purchase a product or service. Affiliate identification links are implanted in the destination URL to track and report the sales on your website back to the affiliate accountable for conveying you the buyers. The affiliate networks track the sales and manage the payment or bounty that is paid to each affiliate.
This method, however, doesn’t come for free, and usually can cost some money. Website hosting, website development, which covers the tools or the services of a web developer, and marketing are usually stuff you need to pay for, and becoming a successful affiliate takes a great deal of time and patience.