What is an affiliate program?
Why should I start one? Where do I find affiliate management software?
by Sarah Jamieson
An affiliate program basically means that you pay people who have
referred business to you. People who use affiliate programs to promote
their products are called merchants. People who promote the products
and drive business to the site are called affiliates. Affiliates are
identified by coded links that they place in their promotion material.
Affiliate programs are also known as associate programs, partner
programs, referral programs, revenue-sharing networks … and
so on!
The real beauty of affiliate programs is that you can get high-traffic
sites to let you advertise with them for FREE.
You don't pay them a thing until you've made money! You can take
advantage of the high search engine rankings and promotion that OTHER
PEOPLE do. It doesn't get any better than that.
Affiliates are motivated to join affiliate programs because they
have nothing to lose, but potentially VERY much to gain. Most affiliate
programs are free to join, so all an affiliates have to lose is half
an hour of time putting up the merchant's link on his or her web site.
But if the affiliate promotes their site correctly, s/he can make
lots of money.
Even more incentive is offered if your program is two-tier, which
means that affiliates who sign up new affiliates are then paid part
of their signup's commissions - for life!
The two-tier system, which is built in to Ultimate Affiliate Plus,
is THE way to automatically recruit affiliates.
Okay, that's the "what" of affiliate programs … now
let's look at the "how."
I can hear you asking, "how will I know which affiliates generated
which sales? How am I going to sign up, manage, and provide marketing
material to potentially thousands of people?"
Doing these things manually takes up hours of your time every day
processing affiliate signups, sending out marketing material and coded
links, and there's still the question of how to actually track where
the sale came from without turning yourself into a programmer!
Well, here's the good news …
The right affiliate software makes the entire process of running
your program EASY. It's no exaggeration to say that Ultimate Affiliate
Plus will do about 90% of the work for you. In a nutshell, here's
how it works …
No neeed to design a signup form - it come with Ultimate Affiliate
Plus. When affiliates visit the web page and complete the form, they
are automatically added to your program and emailed a personalized
message containing specially coded promotional material and the web
address of their personal Affiliate Control Panel.
They can also view real-time statistics and commissions in the Control
Panel - they'll know the software is keeping you honest about what
they've earned!
The affiliate then places the coded link or other material on their
site. When a user clicks the link, Ultimate Affiliate Plus automatically
begins to invisibly track them to see if their visit results in a
sale.
Ifa sale is made, the software automatically calculates the commission
levels you have set. When you pay affiliates, the affiliate's total
commissions are waiting to be exported directly to your favorite check
printing program.
If the click does not result in a sale, the visitor is tracked and
if they DO buy within say one year or any time that you set, the affiliate
still gets a commission!
This builds incredible loyalty with affiliates, who are used to losing
commissions if the visitor does not buy on the first visit but, for
example, bookmarks the site to come back later.
The longer you set your affiliate tracking time - the more your affiliate
will love you.
You'll also find affiliate management to be a snap. Everything you
need is in the handy Control Panel, which is web-based. You can safely
travel anywhere in the world without any affiliate management hassles.
Other benefits of affiliate programs
Take advantage of other people's high traffic
Yahoo and its partner Google get 196 MILLION visitors per day. Imagine
what just ONE top ranking by an affiliate could do for your bottom
line. Now multiply that by the literally thousands of affiliates you
can recruit - it's really NOT that hard, because only about 17% of
web sites have an affiliate program. It's very possible to dominate
your market - IF you act now.
Completely risk-free - you never pay until after you've made money
Affiliate programs are the ONLY form of marketing where you don't
pay a cent until you've made money!
Every other form of marketing requires you to gamble by paying up-front.
And if you're paying for ads by impression or click, you will ALWAYS
pay more than you have to. Even the most effective campaigns don't
result in 100% sales - so there will always be wasted impressions
or clicks that you pay for. Affiliate programs are the only way to
REALLY pay for performance.
The most-effective and least-used form of marketing
The respected Forrester Research ranks affiliate programs as the most-effective
and least-used form of marketing! Now is the time to start or grow
your affiliate program and dominate your market before your competitors
beat you to it. Learn more.
There are easy, effective, and PROVEN ways already in place to sign
up affiliates. Check out our article, "Top 5 ways to find affiliates."
Long-term promotion
Other forms of marketing, such as advertising and search engine placement,
need you to constantly devote time and money to maintain them. Affiliate
marketing is different. Your links can stay on affiliates' sites FOREVER
- because they continue to be rewarded for keeping the links up.
Reach affiliates' priceless email lists
One of the best but most-overlooked benefits of affiliate programs
is that they give you access to not only your affiliates' web site
traffic, but also their incredibly valuable email lists! Whenever
your affiliates promotes your products through their newsletters,
customer lists, company announcements, etc. (the possibilities are
endless), your products reach this huge untapped audience - it is
truly something that can expand your sales immeasurably.
Article 2.3 Synonyms:
managing pay per click
link manager software
affiliate marketing software
marketing management software
link management tools
link management software
ink management software tools
management software marketing
Article 2.3 Related Terms:
affiliate management software tool
affiliate management software tools
affiliate marketing program software
affiliate marketing software software training
affiliate marketing software tool
affiliate marketing software tools
campaign marketing management software
program affiliate management software
affiliate management software program
