| What
is an Affiliate Program?
Affiliate programs, also called associate
programs, are arrangements in which an affiliate
website pays you a commission to send them
traffic. These affiliate Web sites post
links to the merchant site and are paid
according to a particular agreement. This
agreement is usually based on the number
of people you (the affiliate) sends to the
merchant's site, or the number of people
you send who buy something or perform some
other action.
Basically,
if a link on an affiliate site brings the
merchant site traffic or money, the merchant
site pays the affiliate site according to
their agreement. Recruiting affiliates is
an excellent way to sell products online,
but it can also be a cheap and effective
marketing strategy; it's a good way to get
the word out about your site.
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What is an Affiliate Network?
An
affiliate network acts as an intermediary
between publishers (affiliates) and (merchant)
affiliate programs. It allows publishers
to find affiliate programs, which are suitable
for their website and it helps websites
offering affiliate programs reach its target
audience. Almost ever affiliate networks
are free to join. In fact ALL the affiliate
networks on affiliatemarketplace.net are
free!
For merchants, services can include providing
tracking technology, reporting tools, payment
processing, and access to a large base of
publishers.
For
affiliates, services can include providing
one-click application to new merchants,
reporting tools, and payment aggregation.
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CTR (Click-through Rate)
CTR
measures what percentage of people click
on a specific ad to arrive at the destination
site. It doesn’t however include the
people who failed to click, yet arrived
at the site later as a result of seeing
the ad.
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CPA / PPA (Cost Per Action / Pay
per Action)
CPA
is where the advertiser pays for each specified
action (a purchase, a form submission, and
so on) linked to the advertisement.
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CPM / CPT / PPM (Cost per Mille
/ Cost per Thousand / Paid per impression)
In
Latin mille means thousand, therefore, CPM
means cost per thousand. CPM estimates the
cost per 1000 views of the ad.
An example of computing the CPM:
Total cost for running the ad is $15,000.
The total audience is 2,400,000 people.
CPM is calculated as CPM = $15,000/(2,400,000/1000)
= $6.25
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PPC / CPC (Paid Per Click / Cost
per Click)
Many
affiliate programs offer you a - fixed or
varied - commission for every visitor you
send their way. These programs are solely
found on affiliate networks such as; Bidvertiser,
Adbite, Google Adsense etc.
In the PPC model, the publisher does not
have to worry about the sales conversion
rate of the target site, and the advertiser
does not have to worry about how many impressions
it takes to attract the specified number
of clicks.
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PPP
(Paid per Play)
This is roughly the same as PPC, the difference
being you get paid for every visitor viewing
the ad, they do not have to click it. Many
companies, offering contextual advertising,
have this option included in their program.
The good part about it is the possibility
to get paid while visitors stay on your
site, instead of referring them to someone
else.
This option is most suitable for high traffic
web sites. With small quantities of visitors,
this rarely adds up to a good profit. It
can, however, be a good way of targeting
often viewed pages on your site.
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PPS
(Paid per Sale)
This type of commission is based on the
activities of the visitors you refer to
the affiliate website. If you send active
visitors, who shop a lot, this can be a
goldmine compared to PPC and PPM. The type
of commission varies as well. It can be
a percentage of the sale, a fixed amount
per sale/signup or a combination of both.
Paying per sale is often seen as the payment
model most favorable to advertisers and
least favorable to publishers.
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PPL / PPA / Referral (Paid per Lead
or Paid per Action)
This
is roughly the same as PPS, but you get
paid for leads instead of sales. In a pay
per lead agreement, the advertiser only
pays for leads generated at their destination
site. No payment is made for visitors who
don't sign up.
This is a fairly uncommon commission method,
but it often applies to specific categories
of affiliate programs; Insurance companies,
financial institutes and other companies
with high priced products in competitive
markets. A lead may consist of as little
as an email address, or it may involve a
detailed form covering multiple pages. If
you have a site targeting visitors looking
for these kinds of products, this can be
a highly interesting revenue model for you.
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Two-Tier
A
two-tier affiliate program rewards you for
signing up sub-affiliates. As well as earning
commissions on your sales, you earn commissions
on their sales.
When
you join an affiliate program, you are the
first tier. The person you encourage to
sign up is the second tier.
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Raw Visitors
A
Raw visitor is counted every time a page
is viewed on a website.
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Unique Visitors
A
Unique visitor is counted every time a site
is viewed every 24 hrs. If a site receives
a visitor at 8:40am and receives the same
visitor at 11.00pm on the same day (from
the same computer) then it will be counted
as just one visitor. If they had visited
the site 4.20pm the following day then it
would have been counted as two visitors.
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Conversion Rate
The
percentage of visitors who take a desired
action.
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Beta
Beta
is a term used to refer to the final stages
of software development. Usually a select
amount of webmasters are invited to use
a websites alternate site to help them the
website with their software testing. A Beta
can sometimes last for many years.
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SEO
Please
Click here
for a full breakdown of SEO's
Also
more top advice and tips on SEO's Click
here
----------
Dropshipping
Please
Click
here to find out more about dropshipping
Also
to compare dropshipping against affiliate
marketing Click
here
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There
are many options and there is no general
answer to what is best. It’s up to
you to decide where to send your visitors,
experiment, evaluate and finally choose
one or a few affiliate programs & networks
best suited for your needs.
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