What is An Affiliate Program?
How does an affiliate program work. Here are some answers.
Prepared by Gary C. Granai
Director
Poland Import Export Chamber Of Commerce On Line
Affiliate Program Questions And Answers
1. What is an Affiliate Program?
An Affiliate Program is a performance-based marketing relationship between a company with a product or service (Provider) and another person (the Affiliate). The Provider pays the Affiliate a referral fee or commission after a Website visitor, referred by the Affiliate, makes a purchase from the Provider.
You are the affiliate.
2. How does an Affiliate Program work?
An Affiliate Program works like this:
An Affiliate signs-up to the terms and conditions of the Provider's Affiliate Agreement, and receives a URL encoded with their unique Affiliate ID that they will use to advertise the Provider.
When a Website visitor clicks on the Affiliate's link, two things occur: (i) the visitor is redirected to the Provider's Website and (ii) a small piece of information called a 'cookie' is written to the visitor's browser. The cookie stores the referring Affiliate's ID and remains in the visitor's browser when they leave the Provider's Website, turn off their computer, or when they return to the Provider's Website within some predetermined time period.
If the Website visitor returns to the Provider's Website and a purchase is made, the Affiliate software will be triggered by a piece of HTML code. The Affiliate Program Software will look for the cookie on the visitor's browser, and if present, will reward the Affiliate with the sale.
3. Why would someone want to become an Affiliate?
If you have a website now, your Website is getting traffic anyway, right? And, most of that traffic isn't generating significant revenue. What an Affiliate Program does is allow you to harness your Website traffic and earn additional revenue. This is the reason that most people join affiliate programs.
But astute people recognize that affiliate programs do more.
Affiliate programs:
Allow you to sell without inventory.
Allow you to sell without commitment.
Allow you to sell many different products.
Are free.
And they are easy to use to make money.
And you can use them to have other people do the selling for you.
4. How do you join an Affiliate Program?
Joining an Affiliate Program is easy and takes only a few minutes to setup. They are free and all that you have to do is fill in an online application form.
5. Do you need to have a Website to be accepted as an Affiliate?
No. Many Affiliates promote Affiliate programs through email and other sources of business or personal contacts.
I will show you how to do it using the search engines. You can be making money in a few minutes after you start.
6. What does it cost to join an Affiliate Program?
Generally nothing. And you may choose to cancel at any time.
7. Can you participate in Affiliate Programs if you live outside the United States?
Generally, yes. But some programs do have restrictions on given regions.
8. When will you get paid?
Each Affiliate Program lays out its own payment schedule in the Affiliate Program Agreement. Generally payments vary from weekly to quarterly.
9. Can you make more money by referring new Affiliates?
This is where there can be real money for you. Pick an Affiliate Program that has two or more tiers. If you promote it well you can make a lot of money from the efforts of others.
10. How much money can you make as an Affiliate?
Some people make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
11. What is a Sub-Affiliate?
In a nutshell, a sub-affiliate is a person who has become an affiliate after being referred by you. When you refer an affiliate you get a percentage of the sales that they bring in.
Promoting a sub-affiliate program can be an extremely lucrative exercise. It is essentially like having your own sales team out there earning you money but without the hassle of having to manage them.
12.
Where do I find good affiliate programs?
You can look at some affiliate programs by clicking here.