Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Affiliate money

What is an affiliate program?
Affiliate marketing typically refers to an Electronic commerce version of the traditional agent/referral fee sales channel concept. An e-commerce affiliate is a website which links back to an e-commerce site such as Amazon.com. When the readers of the website click on the link, they are connected to the e-tailer and if they purchase a product or service from the said site the affiliate receives a small payment (depending upon the e-commerce site policies), usually a percentage of the money the customer spends.
However, as the e-commerce continues to evolve, e-commerce affiliates are no longer restricted to website owners. Bloggers and members of different online community forums can be affiliates as well. Many emerging affiliate programs are now accepting bloggers and individuals, not necessarily webmasters, to be affiliates.
Affiliates can also be referred as publishers. The Hotel and Travel Industry uses affiliate marketing to a large extent.
Affiliate Marketers don't necessarily have to be Affiliate Marketers specifically. Sometimes such marketers can actually be the e-commerce web site that actually sells the products and services. The advantage of this method of marketing is that it cuts out the middleman.
The networks are free to join but can be hard to find. They sometimes call themselves names like "marketing solutions provider", "pay-for-performance network", "cost-per-action advertising network", or even "performance-based online marketing services company". They can provide pay-per-lead (PPL), pay-per-sale (PPS), pay-per-action (PPA) – sometimes called cost per action (CPA) – and pay-per-click (PPC) offers from merchants that you promote on your web site or in your newsletter.
Some affiliate networks allow almost anyone to join. Others insist your site must receive a certain number of visitors. Some also let you see a directory of the merchants in the network before you join, whereas others show you their list of offers only after you join.

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