Web Affiliate programs
Affiliate programs allow Web sites who provide links to your site to receive payments or reciprocal advertising in exchange.
Affiliate Marketing is a widespread method of promoting a website, in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts.
It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees to individuals who introduce new clients to a business.
Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay-per-click), registrant (Pay-per-lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay-per-Sale).
The most attractive aspect of affiliate marketing, from the merchant's viewpoint is that no payment is due to an affiliate until results are realized.
E-commerce sites, such as Amazon.com run their own affiliate programs while other e-commerce vendors use a third party services provided by CommissionJunction.com, LinkShare.com, BeFree.com and others to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates.
Some businesses credit a great part of their growth and success to this marketing technique, and many online vendors have used it to substantially increase their sales.
Merchants who are considering adding an affiliate strategy to their online sales channel should research the different technological solutions available to them.
Some types of affiliate management solutions include: standalone software, hosted services, shopping carts with affiliate features, and third party affiliate networks.
In its early days many internet users held negative opinions of affiliate marketing due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled.
As the practice has matured, many affiliate programs now prohibit their affiliates from spamming.
Affiliate networks
An affiliate network is composed of a group of merchants and a group of affiliates. Merchants join the network and affiliates join the network in order to advertise the merchant products in exchange of a commission from the merchant. Affiliate networks present some great advantages for the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant gets potential access to a wide networks of affiliates. The affiliate does not necessarily need to make a certain sale amount for one particular merchant but rather for the entire range of merchants before getting paid. The affiliate also puts more trust in a network rather than a merchants independent affiliate program. The merchants pay the overall commission to the network. The network then distributes the money to each affiliate who made the sale.
