Affiliate marketing is a way for online merchants and website owners to share revenue. A site owner places ads promoting the merchant’s site or products, and in return, they get a share of sales revenue. There are 3 types of affiliate marketing: pay per lead, pay per click and pay per sale.
# Pay Per Sale: In pay per sale, the affiliate earns money with each sale that comes from the ads on their site. It can either be percentage or commission-based, or it can be a flat rate.
# Pay Per Lead: In pay per lead advertising, the affiliate earns a predetermined amount every time a customer registers on the merchant’s website after coming from one of their ads.
# Pay Per Click: In pay per click, the affiliate makes a set amount every time a customer follows a link from their site to the merchants.
For many site owners, affiliate marketing offers a way to earn additional cash without doing anything extra. All a site owner has to do is place an ad on the affiliate’s site, with no further promotion required. From there, all the affiliate has to do is wait for their money to come in. Affiliate marketing also helps the merchant; by putting ads on multiple sites, they can bring in more customers, and they don’t have to pay until they get results. If a merchant places more ads on more sites, their products get more exposure.
# Benefits of Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing has many benefits, but it wouldn’t be fair unless we went over the disadvantages as well. For example, the merchant has to share their profits; if an affiliate uses unethical or “black hat” techniques to gain site visitors, or if their site contains objectionable material, the merchant’s reputation can take a big hit. In some instances, ads can be on sites for months before a customer actually clicks through on them or buys anything because of them. That means smaller commissions, not to mention strained relationships.
Website owners are strongly advised to research all merchants before agreeing to an affiliation. Not doing your research beforehand can mean promoting a merchant that will fail to pay commissions, or move without letting you know. Such trickery is uncommon, and most affiliates and merchants succeed in forming mutually beneficial partnerships.
Today’s world moves at a much faster pace than in years gone by, and because of that, affiliate marketing is a great way to increase your revenue. Once you know what affiliate marketing is, and you’ve learned how it works from an affiliate forum, you can decide whether or not it can help. The Internet is growing every day, and having a presence on multiple websites can help bring more visitors to yours.