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Making Money with Affiliate Programs ? Part I


If you have a website and you are not involved in any of thethousands of affiliate programs available on the Internet, youare loosing great opportunities to make some extra income. As inthe case of some top affiliate marketers this extra income mighteven transform into thousands of dollars.

Affiliate program is one of the most effective methods ofproducing sales second only to direct mail. According toForrester Research, a marketing research company, in this year21% of all online sales will be generated from affiliate sitespromoting affiliate products.

If you do your homework right, you too can earn handsomely fromthe correct use of affiliate programs.

What is an affiliate program?

The concept of affiliate program is based on the age-oldbusiness practice of referral service. This is quite commonin many industries. An attorney, for example, gets a certainpercent of commission if he refers a client to another lawyer.

Back in 1996 Amazon.com started the first widespread use ofreferral service on the Internet. If a client comes to Amazon.comand buy a product using a link provided by Amazon, from a websitewhich signed affiliate partnership agreement, that site receives10 to 15% commission from the sale. The Amazon Affiliate Programbecame so successful that it prompted others to follow the suit.Today, affiliate programs became ubiquitous on the Internet makingthem one of the primary methods of online marketing of productsand services.

Affiliate Program can be defined as Internet marketing systemwhere a company allows and helps third party websites, calledaffiliates to post link and refer clients in return for apredetermined flat-fee or percentage-based commission.

Benefits of affiliate programs
Affiliate Programs became so popular because as a partnershipit's a win-win situation for both the program owner and theaffiliates.

Benefits for program owners include:

Increase Sales
The primary reason for most of the companies to adopt anaffiliate program is the possibility of boosting sales. In fact,proper implementation of a quality affiliate program is capableof increasing sales dramatically.

Free promotion
A successful affiliate program can easily become the largesttraffic generator for the company website. Many websites receivemajor portion of their visitors from their affiliate links.To find suitable websites with required content in order to runa banner or link campaign is time consuming and require largeresources; affiliate programs in comparison can resolve thisissue often with a far smaller investment.

Increase search engine ranking
Search engines, Google in particular, calculate link popularityas one of the main factors in their ranking algorithm. Backwardlinks from affiliate sites certainly help improving this.

Branding
Thanks to its affiliate program Amazon.com banner links can beseen on numerous websites. Popularity of Amazon.com among thenewcomers to Internet proves that Amazon.com was successful increating its online brand name. No doubt, omnipresent visibilityof their logo on the affiliate sites definitely had a huge impacton the brand recognition of the Amazon. Offline companies had tospend billions of dollars of advertisement money to get similarresults!

How about the affiliates? What are the benefits they get froman affiliate relationship?

No product or service to carry
Online business with your own product or service might berewarding, but it requires substantial investment from yourpart. With carefully chosen affiliate programs you can have youronline business without the requirement of having your ownproducts.

The investment is low as all you need is a website.

No need to have a merchant account
Since you don't carry your own products or services you do nothave to go through the hassle of having a merchant account tocater your clients. Your affiliate program owner will do everything.All you have to do is supply clients through your designated link.

Possibility of residual income
Many programs pay you a commission from the sales made to thecustomers generated from affiliates, who have signed up as anaffiliate following your link. This kind of affiliate system iscalled 2-tier system.

Visitor tracking system allows affiliate programs to pay you acommission when same visitor from your website makes repeatpurchase.

Some affiliate programs that promote monthly or yearlysubscription services pay a commission each month as long ascustomer referred by you stays subscribed.

Complement you website with added products and services If your site is dedicated to certain products or services,there must be other stuffs that go well together with yourown products. It's a good idea to seek out viable affiliateproducts of these items and promote through your site. Yourvisitors will love this and this will help building loyaltyamong your visitors.

Have new contents for your site
many affiliate programs supply you with valuable marketingmaterials. Some of these materials can be nice addition toyour site content bringing further value to your website.

Various Affiliate programs

There are two ways of running an affiliate program:The company owns and handles the program itself, usingcertain software.

The company uses third party administered affiliate programs.The reasons why many companies prefer to hand over managementof their affiliate programs include technical aspects, costfactor and human factors.

? Companies do not have to spend money on developing, running and updating the software.

? Proven technology allows companies to concentrate on theirjob of selling their products and services.

? Many prospective affiliates prefer third party managedprograms, because they rightfully ponder, in this case theprogram owners have less chance to cheat their affiliates.

Find below a list of some leading third party affiliate programadministrators:

http://www.befree.com
http://www.linkshare.com
http://www.cj.com
http://www.clickbank.com

However, this does not mean that you should avoid company runaffiliate programs. On the contrary, some of the most successfuland best affiliate programs are run by the owners.

If you find an affiliate program that suits your requirementand you feel that the company is a reputable one, by any means you should give it a try!

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and presentCEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, hehas wide experience in Business Consulting, InternationalTrade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplacewith solutions to start and run online business. You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com,http://ezine.rusbiz.com , http://www.rusbiz.com , http://ezine.rusbiz.com/newsletters/newsletter21.htm