What are affiliate programs? – This is a common question asked by many web
developers, marketing webmasters, and people with no experience looking for a
new opportunity interested in earning more revenue from their website. An affiliate
program is a referral-based marketing strategy, also known as “Revenue Sharing”.
It is the latest and greatest internet marketing technique that makes it possible for
websites to share traffic and increase their sales. Advertising sites (Merchants)
offer a commission to affiliate sites (Your Site) and in return for referring visitors that
make a purchase, a commission is paid. Affiliate programs are free to join. If you
own a website and want to promote or market products and services, you can sign
up for an affiliate program that a merchant or internet store offers. You advertise
and promote their products on your website and you get a commission if a visitor
makes a purchase that originates from your promotional banner or link from your
website. You just make money if your referral makes a purchase.
What are 2-tier Affiliate Programs?
Many affiliate programs structure their payout for affiliates to earn commissions on
their conversions as well as conversions of webmasters they refer to the affiliate
program. The first tier of a two-tier program is the same as the regular affiliate
program stated above. The only
difference with a 2 tier program is that all affiliates will get additional compensation
based on commissions generated by other affiliates that joined the same marketing
program that originally came from your link. This person is now one of your 2nd tier
marketing affiliates. Commissions are less for the 2nd tier, but if you get a lot of
marketing affiliates it can add up to a substantial about of income. Sometimes an
affiliate program compensation will be written in shorthand as follows (tier1/tier2)
(ex. 20%/5%)
How do I put Affiliate Program Links on my Site?
Each affiliate program will give you instructions on how to establish affiliate links to
their site. Usually, there is a web page that allows you to generate some HTML
code to put on your site that automatically makes a banner or advertisement
appear on your Internet website. This marketing code will display text or an image
on your web page that is linked to the merchant’s website. This affiliate link
contains a tracking cookie code that lets the merchants shopping cart system know
the referral came from you and you get credit for each purchase
automatically. Most affiliate programs have a login where you can see statistics, on
clicks that originated from your marketing website and sales made.
