What is an Affiliate? 2

The basic set up, from the affiliate’s side, goes as follows: You (the Affiliate) find a company or product that you would like to promote.

You join the “affiliate program” of the company and receive the links and marketing assistance you need to drive traffic to the site and track your leads and sales.

These tools most often include a special URL link, which will let the company know that the customer has come from you. You will get credit when people visit the companies’ websites, or when they buy something or fill out a form.

Affiliate networks like Commission Junction show you the company’s details, terms of the agreement and percentage of commission, or per lead payment, and any incentives by the company to get you to an even higher level of commission.

In addition, they will suggest useful keywords, and give you a list of keywords you should not bid on if you were going to try to drive traffic to the site using Pay Per Click (PPC) in order to boost sales and therefore your commissions.

In most cases, the only real rule is to not bid on their trademark, but that would be true anyway, as Google and other search engines now make sure that this is not permitted, since it is copyright infringement.

The affiliate managers will also give you ‘creative’, pictures, links, ad copy, that they think will be effective. In most cases, there is a record of past performance right next to the ad, so if given a choice, don’t go for the one that looks pretty, go for the one that is the highest in terms of conversions from click through to actual sale.

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Author: jm

Joan Mullally has been doing business online for more than 20 years and is a pioneer in the fields of online publishing, marketing, and ecommerce. She is the author of more than 200 guides and courses designed to help beginner and intermediate marketers make the most of the opportunities the Internet offers for running a successful business. A student and later teacher trainee of Frank McCourt’s, she has always appreciated the power of the word, and has used her knowledge for successful SEO and PPC campaigns, and powerful marketing copy. One computer science class at NYU was enough to spark her fascination with all things digital. In her spare time, she works with adult literacy, animal fostering and rescue, and teaching computer skills to women.