What Is An Affiliate Program?

An affiliate program is an arrangement whereby you receive a commission for promoting a product or service on behalf of its owner. The term “affiliate” is used interchangeably with “reseller” or “associate.” The commissions are paid as either flat fees or percentages of the sale.

Interesting Fact: While Amazon.com is credited with launching the first affiliate program on the Internet in 1996, that has been highly disputed.

For someone just starting out on the Internet, affiliate marketing is ideal because it doesn’t require having a product or service of your own. All the logistics of running the business are the owner’s headache, not yours. That means you can concentrate on driving traffic to the business website and building your affiliate profits.

Types Of Products suitable for affiliate sales include
e-books,
courses,
tutorials,
on-line seminars called tele-seminars,
audio or video products,
and new products get created periodically.

Because of the way that information flows online, affiliate programs are a natural for the Internet. There are currently many thousands of programs that affiliate marketers can choose from, ranging from Dental Insurance to Vitamins to Luggage and especially to Information Products. There are numerous Affiliate Networks available (directories that provide affiliate services), the five biggest being ClickBank,
Commission Junction,
Linkshare,
Performics
and Be Free.
The most popular of all these is ClickBank. But, Commission Junction is the directory where most affiliate programs are registered.

How Affiliate Programs Are Paid:

The three most common ways that commissions are paid are per click, per lead and per sale:

In pay per click, all you need to do is get visitors to click on your unique affiliate link. Because these programs don’t require a sale to get payment, they are popular among webmasters who have smaller sites.

Like pay per click, pay per lead programs do not require a sale. You can get paid for sending New subscribers to a free newsletter or by giving away free coupons or reports.

Pay per sale affiliate programs go farthest back in time. Just as described, you earn commissions when you refer someone to the merchant’s site and they buy the product or service. Because much work is involved in pay per sale, commissions are substantially higher.

Other affiliate programs that we will define and explore on this website include Two Tier, Residual Income and Pay Per Impression.

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