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Understanding Affiliate ProgramsAffiliate programs are commonly misunderstood, in order to understand affiliate programs lets start with terminology. For clarification purposes, an affiliate is defined as any "referrer" or website that promotes a product in an effort to earn revenue. A merchant is defined as someone who owns a product and is sharing revenues with an affiliate based on the affiliate's performance. Affiliate programs can drive targeted traffic to your website. There are 3 basic affiliate programs, though only the first two are commonly used. Pay Per Click - this is when an affiliate is compensated for sending traffic to the merchant. (AdSense is an example of PPC affiliate program) Pay Per Sale - this is when the affiliate is compensated by the merchant if the referral generates a sale or purchase. Pay Per Lead - this is when the merchant agrees to pay for a qualified (or sometimes unqualified lead), which is very uncommon because it is subjective and up to the merchant. Affiliate websites tend to provide information, entertainment, and content services to their customers. The online merchants sell products, goods and services online. These are programs permitting affiliates to earn money based on the visitors to your site who click through to another's website. Some pay a token amount for the click through and others provide a percentage of sales when a visitor "clicks through" to your site and buys a product or service on the other party's site. This could represent a value added service to your visitors. Affiliate programs allow you to pay and track incentives from other websites that send web surfers, leads or paying customers to your website. Commissions based on purchases made by traffic sent from the referring website can be paid. Besides a commission, an affiliate can receive a flat fee, or other incentives for all valid transactions it refers that generate a sale or lead. Be careful that the affiliate's web page is not cluttered with banner ads that may crowd out your link, or that be annoying to customers. Affiliate programs enable affiliates to leverage their traffic and customer base in order to profit from e-commerce while merchants benefit from increased exposure and sales. Commonly traffic to merchant sites is measured and affiliates can clearly see conversion rates. Meaning, they track the percentage of people they are referring, and how much of it results in earned revenue. If the affiliate finds a very low conversion, they will find a better way to monetize that traffic, quite possibly with a competing merchant product. In order to be a successful affiliate, the affiliate site needs to either have tons of traffic or target a specific audience, frequently one untapped by the merchant. It has been my experience, the closer the affiliate site content resembles the merchant products, the higher the likelihood of a good conversion rate. Once you are committed to the idea of affiliates, the next step is to determine the kind of tracking system you are going to use. Sales can be tracked by HTML code, which is placed in a shopping cart or on the 'order confirmation'/'thank you' page, and cookies, which are created after the customers click on a banner ad. Cookie killers have been a problem for the affiliate industry. Software vendors have an advantage over other merchants in that new technologies allow software developers to better control compensation. Vendors can 'wrap' their software insuring that their affiliates are compensated for referrals, even if the customer downloads a trial version prior to purchasing. Buy now buttons in the software have affiliate ids imbedded in the download. Combined tracking systems have more success than those that rely on a single tracking technology. In order to develop a successful affiliate network, merchants must realize that affiliates spend ad dollars on site, and product promotion. If the affiliate is not compensated fairly they will not remain in the merchants network. The bottom line is that affiliate relationships are partnerships, when both sides feel the situation is fair and equitable the relationship will be a success. About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.feedforall.com , http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com and http://www.small-business-software.net Build up links to your websiteThere are three main factors that determine the search engine ranking of your website:
Site optimisation is about placing your keywords in the right places on your website and making your website accessible to search engines. Please read Search engine optimisation: The basics for more about this. Site popularity can be achieved through online and offline marketing and through link popularity - the more websites that link to you the more people will find your website. For more on online marketing please read this Buying your way in article. The directoriesAdvert: Training coursesWant to learn more about about usability, accessibility or CSS? Why not come on one of our excellent training courses:
Courses are held every month in London and are taught by usability and accessibility professionals. The best place to start any linking strategy is with web directories. The two biggest by far are Yahoo! and the Open Directory (used by Google). Being listed in these is an absolute must as they generate huge amounts of traffic. There are plenty of other directories you should get listed in too. Global, local and industry-specific directories abound on the Internet. To find them run a search for ‘web directory’ on your favourite search engine. The directories that come up highest in the search rankings will probably generate the most traffic. You can also check these directories of directories:
Webmaster forumsAnother great place to get your site listed. Most webmaster forums have an area where you`re allowed to enter your URL to get feedback from other webmasters. Find some forums, sign up, and get posting! Long-term solutionGetting links in directories (and forums) is really important, but obviously there`s only so far you can go with this tactic. It`s really important to have a long-term strategy to build up those incoming links to a sizeable level. A real long-term solution, and one that adds significant value to your website, is to create first-rate content. That`s it. Quite simple really. First-rate content should:
If you can provide this kind of content then other websites will want to link to you. By doing so they`ll be adding value to their site visitors. How do I create first-rate content?Unfortunately what works for one website won`t work for another, so I can`t offer you any specific advice. Here are some examples though, to help you start thinking about it:
As you may have realised by now, creating and updating your first-class content is a lot of work. It`s also really hard to stay motivated because you don`t see any immediate gains from it - it takes a very long time for word to spread about your website. Just hang in there and over time you`ll see that it really does pay off. Tell the world about your websiteNow that you`ve created your first-rate content you need to let the world know about it. To advertise your website for free you can:
Look for websites and ask them to link to youThere are three ways you can find websites that might want to link to you.
Now that you`ve found these websites, ask them to link to you. A quick phone call or e-mail ought to do the trick. And remember, always mention that linking to your website will benefit their site users and therefore their website. You could also offer a link exchange, where by you both link to each other. If you`re going to do this, it`s wise to link to their website first, before getting in contact. Press releases and articlesYou can use search engines to find websites related to your industry that would welcome interesting articles and press releases. Include a short bio at the bottom of the release, including a link to your website, and you`re good to go. You can deposit articles at one of the numerous article banks on the Internet, such as Go Articles. You can also use a press distribution service to issue press releases to journalists, such as M2.com or Pressbox. This article was written by Trenton Moss. Trenton`s crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he went and started his own web usability and accessibility consultancy to help make the Internet a better place for everyone. He knows an awful lot about the Disability Discrimination Act and spends much of his time doing DOM scripting & accessible JavaScript. What next?
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