What Is An Affiliate Program? – Your Ticket To Earnings On the
Internet!
By Lori Wilkerson
The term has
been bandied about on the Internet so often that it’s almost
inevitable that you’ve heard it, but you still probably aren’t
sure what the answer is when someone asks, “What is an affiliate
program?” That’s okay, because a lot of other people don’t
understand how it works, either.
Affiliate
marketing is a marketing concept based on referrals, an
old-fashioned idea that’s found a new niche on the web. Today’s
programs are based on one company selling a product or gaining
website traffic by having many other companies or websites
sending customers to it.
Here’s the
beauty of this kind of program – if you are an affiliate, every
time someone visits your website and clicks through to order a
product from the other company, you earn money! Just think, once
you set up your website, you don’t have to do anything but keep
it in good working order and then let it make money for you.
There are
several types of affiliates, and although they differ slightly,
you can usually define them as one of these four:
- CPA is
“cost per acquisition,” or more simply, “cost per sale.” You
make money each time someone going to the company site
actually makes a purchase.
- CPL is
“cost per lead,” and means that the visitor to the linked
site doesn’t have to make an actual purchase, but will have
to fill out an information form or survey of some type.
- CPC is
“cost per click,” and is exactly what it sounds like. If
someone visiting your site visits their site, you make a
commission. Very simple, but generally generates a much
smaller percentage than CPA or CPL.
- CPM is a
bit different. This is a flat fee for displaying an
affiliate’s banner 1,000 times. It stands for “cost per
1,000 impressions” – who knows why this is CPM and not CPI.
A marketing mystery.
How Do I Know
If My Site Will Generate Traffic?
If you want to
make money with an affiliate program, it needs to be a
well-designed website and you need to show up in the search
engines. Obviously this takes some decent writing skills and an
understanding of search engines.
Successful
marketing doesn’t just happen, so industry conferences and other
proven training programs that can give you tips on how to
improve your rankings, define the best keywords for your site,
maximize the potential of your links and track your site’s
performance have sprung up around the country. These always play
to sell-out crowds.
Two popular
opportunities are
Commission Junction University (CJU) and
LinkShare Symposium, both of who share information from
affiliate industry experts. (See our article on these
conferences.)
In most cases,
once an individual sets up an affiliate website, it becomes an
all-consuming passion. With one well-established, interesting
site that has been thoughtfully designed and executed, links can
spider out to a half-dozen or more affiliate sites, each
generating a separate income stream.
By taking the
time to set up one well-designed site, an individual working at
home nights or weekends can develop a secondary income and then
add additional affiliates over the course of a few weeks or
months and soon begin receiving monthly pay checks from six or
more companies, eliminating the need for a day job altogether.
If you are
interested in what type of affiliate program might work for you,
do some research and get those fingers flying on the keyboard –
you could soon be making money.
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About The
Author
Lori Wilkerson
is a full-time freelance writer who loves her work because it
gives her the opportunity to learn more about the world every
day. Right now, she knows a little bit about almost everything,
and a bunch about
earning a living at home using a computer.
She has two dogs who are spoiled and one teenager who is not.
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