When you are a company and doing online business, do you think it is appropriate to have an affiliate program? If you run an e-commerce business, I’m sure you would want your sales to pitch up, or if you have a personal website or blog site and need some resources to cover up website cost, a good option is joining an affiliate program. Always keep in mind that the best option relies on what features and details of affiliate programs could best serve your site and you have to consider your budget and how much you are willing to shell out.
What is an affiliate program?
An affiliate program is a marketing program where you can receive percentage for the assistance given to a company to generate sales. The company supports you with all your advertising tools such as links, tracking codes and banners to place on your website, in your emails or other online listings.
When a visitor to your site or listing clicks on an ad or link, the transaction is tracked. If this transaction results in a sale for the parent company, you get paid for that sale.
The types of affiliate programs
- Cost per thousand impression (CPM) – CPM stands for cost per 1,000 impressions (times your ads are shown) that you’ll pay when people see your advertisement. When you establish your advertisement, your impressions will be optimized so your ad shows to people who are most likely to assist you achieve your objective.
- Pay- per-click – the seller site pays the affiliate based on the number of visitors who click on the link to come to the seller’s site. They don’t have to buy anything, and it doesn’t matter to the affiliate what a visitor does once he gets to the seller’s site.
- Pay per sale – In this agreement, the seller site pays an affiliate when the affiliate sends them a customer who buys something from their site. Some websites pay the affiliate a percentage of the sale and others pay a fixed amount per sale.
- Pay per lead – Companies with these programs pay their affiliates based on the number of visitors they refer who sign up as leads. This simply means the visitor fills out some requested information at the merchant site, which the merchant site may use as a sales lead or sell to another company as a sales lead.
Benefits of an affiliate program
- Drive traffic to your website
- Generate certified leads
- Increased sales
- Expand the reach of your branding
- You don’t have to pay your affiliates until you make money.
- The ideal viral marketing technique.
- Lower down marketing costs.
There is perfectly no better way to advertise your product and service online than the affiliate programs. The good thing behind affiliate programs is that they allow you to authorize a multitude of marketers and salesmen who have their own websites, visitors and opt-in lists. These people are your affiliates and they use their visitors and opt-in lists to advertise your products and services. The best part here is that you don’t have to pay them anything until they make an earning for you.
Tags: Affiliate Marketing Programs, Business Marketing Strategy
