As a webmaster, you may be wondering how you might boost your site's revenue without having to go through the hassle of major software restructuring or substantially modifying the content. Entering an Affiliate Program is one of the simplest and most straightforward methods to accomplish it.
Simply said, an Affiliate Program is a marketing arrangement between you and another website that sells a specific product or service. The other website, referred to as the "merchant" in the industry, pays you a commission for marketing and advertising services you provide for them. These services can be as basic or as complex as you like, depending on the complexity of your site and the modifications you want to make.
If you enter such an agreement with a merchant, your web site then becomes referred to as a “publisher”. As a publisher, one of the simplest and easiest ways to earn extra revenue is to enter a per-click and per-ad commission agreement with your merchant. In the per click basis, you simply add links to your web site that redirect people to your merchant’s web site. For every person thus redirected, you earn a small fee. The per ad basis means that you actually set up small graphic, flash animation, or even video streaming ads on your web site on behalf of the client. Per-ad affiliate programs are paid on a constant basis, usually per month of ad space. On a per-ad basis, you set up small graphic, flash animation, or even video streaming advertising on behalf of the customer on your website. Affiliate programs that pay per ad are paid on a regular basis, usually per month of ad space.
Aside from these two, several merchants have "loyalty" and "rebate" programs that provide you electronic coupons and the ability to assist individuals register on the merchant's website for a discount program. In these circumstances, payment is made in two ways: first, you receive a commission for each discount or sign-up. Two, every time someone uses coupons they got from you or a discount program you offered to buy a product from the retailer, you get a commission from the sale.
Webmasters that run personal websites with their own blog pages, member forums, compose their own article content, or even print their own periodic e-magazines will benefit from a third sort of affiliate program. Webmasters that own personal websites can get compensated for marketing products through review articles, a spot on their discussion forums, blogs, and the traditional option of putting a link that you get paid for per click. Many merchants prefer this option because they believe they can reach clients more directly through personal websites than through "commercialized" techniques.
You can even choose to become an etailer, which is short for electronic retailer, if you want to take affiliate marketing to the next level. You become a licensed sales agent for your merchant as an etailer, and commissions from direct product sales are substantially higher. This is more profitable for webmasters who are also active salespeople, but it is too much of a hassle for webmasters who like to let their sites run on "autopilot." If you like direct action, though, you might want to look into this type of affiliate scheme.
Finally, multi-level affiliate marketing is a viable option. This works similarly to traditional multi-level marketing schemes, in which sales representatives earn commissions not only for direct sales, but also for recruiting other sales representatives on behalf of the organization. They then receive further commissions from both the recommendations and the sales generated by the referrals. They can even profit from the direct sales of referrals made by their referrals down the line of the hierarchy on a diminishing returns basis.
This is done nearly precisely the same way in affiliate marketing, except instead of sales people, webmasters discover other interested webmasters and bring them in as merchant publishers. If the network of publishers can be made to rapidly and steadily increase, this can be a very strong and self-sustaining marketing strategy that benefits both the publishers and the merchant.
Last but not least, there's the "hybrid" affiliate program. This strategy combines the majority of the methods listed above, and it can be the most profitable for a dedicated webmaster. It will almost certainly take the greatest time and effort, but it can also bring in the most money because to many, overlapping programs.
