What is Affiliate Marketing?

If you have a Web site or blog and are looking for a way to earn income from your online property, consider affiliate marketing programs.

Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

Pay Per Click — Every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by "clicking" on the link leading to the merchant's website, a certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate's account. This amount can be pennies or dollars depending on the product and amount of the commission.

Pay Per Sale — Every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate's website, a percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate's account.

Pay Per Lead — Every time a potential client registers at the merchant's website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate's account, a previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate's account.


Getting Started: Know The Lingo
If you're in affiliate marketing, here's a quick reference of some of the more common terms used in conjunction with affiliate marketing. By familiarizing yourself with the terminology you'll be better able to understand the affiliate agreement, how different programs work, and how you can earn money.

TIP:For more affiliate marketing terms, visit Webopedia's Online Marketing category.

Types of Affiliate Programs
Different advertisers offer different types of affiliate programs. If you join a search engine affiliate program you most likely will be placing text links or banners to their advertisers and you'll work on a pay-per-click fee. E-mail list affiliates promote e-mail newsletters and are usually paid when a person joins the advertised opt-in e-mail list. Being an affiliate of any merchant usually means you are paid a commission per sale on the advertiser's Web site. Generally speaking, pay-per-click affiliate programs pay the least amount, as affiliates are often paid per thousands clicks (CPC).

Pay-per-lead programs are when you you provide the links to downloads, trial offers, e-mail opt-in lists and so on. Depending on the advertiser you may be paid per lead generation or you may not be paid unless the user subscribes and pays for a full service from the advertiser. Again, you may also receive fees for both instances. Pay-per-sale affiliate programs (also called revenue sharing) usually offer the highest commissions, and you'll typically receive a set dollar amount per sale or a straight percentage of the total sale. Because a user has to purchase something, you may find this program best-suited to high-traffic affiliate sites.

How Does it Work?
Knowing what ads to place and what revenue your Web site generates isn't magic. Once you join an affiliate program you then are able to choose the products or banners you want to include on your Web site, and then receive the code you will need to insert on specific Web page or throughout your Web site. This changes, however, when you select an ad revenue partnership, such as Google AdSense, for example where you have little or no control over the advertisement displayed. In joining the affiliate program, you will agree to their terms of service, called an affiliate agreement, which will tell you what requirements you must meet and how the click-through, lead generation or sales are tracked.

Here is an example of one affiliate program, how it works and the requirements of the affiliate:

WorldWinner is an online "Pay to Play" online game Web site that offers a revenue-sharing affiliate program. From the WorldWinner Web site (the advertiser in this case), you would first fill out an application to become an affiliate by providing basic information about yourself and your Web site through a Web-based sign up form. If you're accepted as an affiliate, WorldWinner will provide you with an affiliate ID as well as the address to a Web page where you can generate the code to place different links advertising WorldWinner on your own site. They offer rotating or static text links, banners or buttons, and co-brand Web sites are also allowed. When you generate the code to place on your own Web site, it will contain your unique affiliate ID. Any user who clicks a link to WorldWinner that contains your ID is tracked by WorldWinner via cookies. If they become a paying player and deposit money to their account and play games for cash, you then earn money yourself; it will be a percentage of that user's deposits for as long as you remain an affiliate (this particular affiliate program offers a 25 percent share in Net Applicable Revenue). WorldWinner also hosts and provides you with all the statistics and information you need to determine how many users your are sending to their Web site, if they are depositing funds, and also provide you with your revenue and payout information.

For the most part, affiliate programs work by using a combination of a unique user ID and cookies to track your leads and subsequent revenues. Most will offer a private affiliate section on their Web site where you can get your HTML code and also check your affiliate account status and information. Through the use of browser cookies, any person who uses your link to make the desired action within a set amount of time contributes to your affiliate revenue.

For example if a user follows your link and looks through an online software store they are tracked as "your referral" by the browser cookie. If the person makes the purchase before the cookie expires, you get the referral commission. So even if a user sits with items in their shopping cart but doesn't go back and make the purchase for two weeks, you can still get the commission, provided the cookie is still active.

For the Webmaster, one of the the hardest things about using an affiliate program to earn money is finding a good one that will actually produce results for you. To better your chances of earning revenue from affiliate marketing here are some tips to get you started;

* Always read the fine print. Make sure you understand how the payouts are structured, if you need to earn a minimum dollar amount before a payout, and, of course, compare commissions between similar affiliate programs.

* Once you have narrowed down your options to a handful of possibilities, take a look at the merchant or marketers' Web site rankings and traffic. If, for example, you have your choice narrowed down to three computer software e-tailers, you can use Google and Alexa rankings to help you determine which may have a better volume of traffic. While their Web site traffic won't directly help you promote their products, this may tell you which company has a larger customer-base (more traffic). A well-known name that your Web site visitors may be familiar with might encourage them to click the advertising links on your own site.

* Choose affiliate programs that complement your Web site content. If your site is all about sports, then chances are you'll want to skip on setting up a co-branded Web store for cartoon themed car accessories, for example. Also, if affiliate programs offer customizable banners, buttons or splash pages that can be edited to reflect elements of your own site design, be sure to take advantage of those options.

* Don't be afraid to play the field and try a couple affiliate programs, or opt out of one and choose another if you're not seeing any results after time. Results are going to be based on how much traffic your own Web site gets. If your site serves only a couple visitors a day, you can't expect high click-through numbers.

Choosing an Affiliate Program
Because there are such a large number of affiliate programs to choose from and many are structured differently, here are some tips to keep in mind while looking for a good match.

First, you need to be sure you are comfortable with the product you're promoting or selling and you have confidence in the advertiser you are linking to. Check the pages on the advertiser's Web site. If it's something you yourself would never consider purchasing, or it possibly looks a bit unreliable, then chances are your visitors won't be interested in it either. If you're running a content-based site, you don't want to sell anything that might offend visitors or lower their opinion of your site.

The best rule of thumb is to pick affiliate programs that offer something that's relevant to your site. For example, if your Web site is about registering domain names, look for affiliate programs that are related to the topic such as Web site hosting, Webmaster tools and software, Web site templates and so on. There is nothing worse than advertisements that stand out like a sore thumb on your pages (e.g., online casino ads placed on a Web site about elementary school math tutorials). Even niche sites can find affiliate programs that are a good match.

What is the Advertiser really offering its affiliates? Make sure you really understand the affiliate agreement and that you'll be able to comply with it. Take the time to check out the advertiser before joining to ensure they really do pay out to affiliates and that their program is not a scam. Look at what the advertiser is offering in terms of tracking and reporting tools for affiliates. Good programs will provide you with a way to access real-time automated statistics to view conversions, sales and commissions. Be sure you have ad and product display options to integrate the advertising into your Web site. Can you change the colors, themes and choose from a selection of different sized banners and buttons? With this type of service it means a little less work for you, the affiliate, and it also means your affiliate program meshes with your site. Some higher-pay programs may look attractive, but may offer a higher commission because they might not provide support and tools to their affiliates. If this is the case, make sure you determine if this program will be too high-maintenance for you before joining.

Generally speaking pay-per-click programs offer the lowest dollar value for conversions, and you'll need a higher click through rate to earn money. Pay-per-lead and pay-per-sale programs will usually offer a higher commission, but you'll have less visitors clicking through to complete the transactions, so you need to have a lot of unique visitors. Use your own traffic and reporting tools to determine which type of program will have a better chance of success on your own site.

Resources
To get started with finding a good affiliate program, we suggest you start with the Affiliate Reviews on Ecommerce-Guide (you'll find them listed in the Related Links section below), or visit the Refer-It.com Web site, which provides ratings and details on over six thousand online affiliate programs.