Affiliate Program: March 2008

Monday, March 24, 2008

What is residual affiliate marketing

When most people start exploring the world of affiliate marketing, they think that they might run a site that will link to sites like Amazon or eBay where people will need to buy a book or a CD or start or win an auction for them to get paid.

But there is another kind of affiliate marketing that can earn you money without lifting a finger. Don’t believe me? It’s true!

If you link to a site that requires a customer to buy a membership in something, say a gym membership or maybe an adult site that requires a monthly fee, you don’t just get paid once when that person signs up.

Every time that customer pays their monthly membership fee, you get paid. Honest! It’s called residual affiliate marketing and it can be an amazing way to make money from home on your website.

Everyone dreams of sitting at home and making money without doing anything. Well, this is a legitimate way to do just that. Different kinds of membership sites tend to keep customers for different amounts of time. If someone remains a member of a site or a program that you linked them to, you could get residual commissions for years to come. If they cancel after one month, then you would only get one commission. This is why it’s extremely important to link to quality websites. You’re maximizing your effort. A good rule of thumb to follow is if you wouldn’t use that site, don’t expect the people you’re linking it to to use it either.

How can you maximize this profit stream? The best way to do it is to choose who you link to carefully. Try to go with sites that offer high quality products that get used up. Things like vitamins are a great choice. They tend to be expensive and people develop a good brand awareness with things like medicine and vitamins so if a customer is happy buying them from a site you linked them to, they will become regular customers. A happy customer for the company you link to ends up being a constant revenue stream for you!

Residual marketing can be an absolute gold mine for some web users. It doesn’t happen automatically though, you’ll need to make sure you link to quality products and services if you expect people to use them again and again. Make your choices wisely and you’ll be shocked at how much money you can make!

Sunday, March 23, 2008

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing has quickly become one of the most popular and the most effective ways to advertise on the Internet. The premise of affiliate marketing is very simple.

A company, let’s say eBay, goes to another web site and asks them to place a banner or link to eBay on their site. Every time a user clicks on that eBay banner and visits the site, the owner of the original site gets a commission. It’s as simple as that.

The history of affiliate marketing goes back to approximately 1994 with the trailblazing music website www.CDNow.com. They were, as far as most people know, the first site to pay other sites for directing Internet traffic to them. Internet giant Amazon.com soon caught on and became the site most associated with affiliate marketing. Today, the practice of affiliate marketing is used by essentially every major web site in the world.

Why affiliate marketing? One of the reasons that affiliate marketing has proven to be so popular is that it is completely based on performance. In most cases, the company doing the advertising doesn’t pay a single penny to the site that is carrying their ad unless there is evidence that Internet traffic has been driven to the advertising site. There are, however, other ways of doing affiliate marketing.

Some advertising sites have paid the site hosting their link based not on the number of times an original IP visits through the link, but on the number of times the banner ad was “seen.” This method presents a whole host of problems since things like hit counts can be forged and there is no way to insure that just because someone visited a web page that had your logo on it that they even saw it or if they did, that they even knew what it was.

Other methods of affiliate marketing include paying only when a link is followed AND some kind of transaction takes place. This can be tough on the site hosting the link because the attention span of the average Internet user isn’t long enough in most cases to follow a link and then either complete a purchase, or fill out a form of some kind. The conventional method simply pays a host a commission for every time an original IP is directed to their site.

In a matter of only a few years, affiliate marketing has become one of the most cost effective ways to drive traffic to a site. Since, in most cases, both the advertiser and the host profit from the set up, there is no reason to believe that affiliate marketing won’t be a dominant advertising method well into the future.

Friday, March 21, 2008

What are Two-tier affiliate sites?

Most experienced web users are familiar with affiliate marketing and how it works. You provide a link on your website and when someone follows it and buys a product, you get a piece of the profit. It’s easy. But there is a new way to make some serious bucks when it comes to affiliate marketing.

It’s called two-tier affiliate marketing. Don’t let the complicated name fool you. It’s just as easy to make money from two-tiered marketing as it is from the traditional style.

The way two-tier affiliate marketing works is that not only do you make a buck or two when someone follows a link from your site and then buys a product or service, but you also make a buck whenever someone follows the link from your site and then signs up to become an affiliate marketer just like you! It’s like getting double the profits for no extra work!

And the best part? It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Every time that new affiliate marketer makes a sale of a product or service, you continue to make a few extra bucks. Not only that, but when they get someone to sign up for affiliate marketing, you get a piece of their profits too! It may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. If you can get a whole host of people to sign up for affiliate marketing through you, you continue to make money off of their sales as long as they are in the program.

And don’t worry about any legality problems. You’re selling legitimate products and services so anyone that suggests that what you’re doing is multi-level marketing is dead wrong. The set up may be somewhat similar, but it is completely legitimate and you are rewarded on how good of a job you do signing people up, exactly like a real job. You only make what you earn!

And the best part of it all is there is no limit on how much money you can make. If you are a wiz at getting people to sign up for affiliate marketing through your site, the amount of commission you could be chalking up is staggering. Two-tier affiliate sites might just be the best and easiest way for you to run a business from home that is profitable and has almost no hassle. So, what are you waiting for? Join up today and start collecting commission now!