Affiliate Marketing Partie

"A system of advertising in which site A agrees to feature buttons from site B and the site receives a commission on sales generated for site B. It can also be applied to situations where an advertiser in May looking for marketing information, rather than a cash sale. Popular among startups with marketing budgets very small. "

This is what you get when you search in Google for the definition of affiliate marketing.

I still remember my first days of induction into the world of Internet marketing, more specifically "Affiliate Marketing."

Until then, I was completely unaware of this term. For most of us, affiliate marketing is a term that has different meanings. Turning first to the other side of the line and say that affiliate marketing is nothing but unnecessary pop ups, newsletter spam, affiliate tracking code cloaking and much more.

Now from the other side of the online affiliate marketing is a way to market your products online by signing up affiliates who have websites and are willing to promote your products on their site in exchange for the obtaining a certain percentage of commission on sales they generate.

If you look closely, for a particular product or company, you will find the server loads of affiliates, marketing company or product. Now it is itself an indicator of how you market your products online.

Speaking of affiliate marketing, this article alone would not suffice. Hence, I divided into a series of articles. Although I am very tempted to write first on 'tools to improve the conversion of an affiliate "Let me stick to the timeline.

Why does a company need an affiliate program?

Having defined, affiliate marketing, the obvious question that arises then is why a company needs affiliates when it can sell products on its own.

In response, while a company may be very significant in terms of infrastructure, or something really effective, it can not remain silent and bank on its own forces. Following this, a company can not customize the look and feel of the site to suit the tastes of local markets. Although there are tools where you can coat your site, this would imply a greater complexity in terms of technical and marketing requirements. Hence, arises the need for affiliates.

What makes a company look for affiliates?

Let's face it. Each website that has a decent success rate enjoys a niche market. It is especially for smaller sites that you see a higher percentage of customer loyalty. There are several reasons for this: one of the most obvious is the service and personalization provided by the smaller sites. It is like those sites that attract companies to negotiate when you register as an affiliate.

The mistakes most companies make: In my experience, working with the affiliate program, a huge mistake is that most companies who are in affiliate marketing just design the specs and set it up on their website and wait for webmasters to sign with them.

Now, you never know what kind of traffic you would attract. This where the 80:20 rule comes into the picture and that is how most companies develop their strategies for affiliate marketing efforts.

A more detailed article on this subject can be found, entitled: "Eliminating the 80:20 rule"

Do you think you're ready to register as an affiliate?

Perhaps, for most of us, this question never seem to arise due to the fact that the commissions offered to an affiliate is important enough to blind us to the most basic and simple facts to begin with. Let's face it, if a company offers you a huge commission to sell their products, you can be assured that it will take considerable time and effort to make a single sale. I would not quote figures here that commissions vary from product sector of the market to another.

Some tips to remember before you register as an affiliate:

1. Taking stock of the situation. Or "gurus" call, make a SWOT analysis of your site. This will submit your website in a very simple and subtle. With that, you know where the strength of your website is in.

2. Scout for the product for you. This is common sense, but let me reiterate this fact. Always sign up for products you think fit with the theme of your site. You would not be a web hosting service and register as an affiliate, selling another host who promises to give you a commission of 50%. That would be very stupid to do. The key is that you subscribe to services that are "value added" for services provided by your website.

3. The general conditions of membership.

This is the saddest of affiliate marketing. In my experience, I usually come across at least 2 cases of misunderstood affiliates who feel cheated in the matter. Always ensure that you have read the terms and conditions carefully and clarify with the company if you have further questions.

4. Prepare your site. Another major problem in affiliate marketing is tracking. Always make sure you have some tools and logs to monitor traffic on your site and if possible outgoing links, clicks, etc. Let's face it, no matter how high a society is, creating the perfect affiliate tracking tools is something I have not met yet. So there will always be a situation where you have to lose in a conversion. Make sure your back is covered with the tools so that your case will have credibility.

Remember, a company would never refuse an affiliate, especially if the entity is actually true. Why? I'm sure you know why.

5. Affiliate Networks or Direct Affiliate? Now that you have all the details with you, the next question is whether to register with a network of affiliates to register directly as an affiliate society. There are some things to consider here. I would not stop you from enrolling in one of the entities as both have their advantages and disadvantages.

a) If you are looking for a reasonably smooth and trouble-free monitoring in place, then Affiliate Networks would be the right place for you.

b) If you are unsure of the products you want to sell, but you want to set up affiliate banners, then the affiliate networks is the best place to register.

c) If you think you can manipulate the terms and conditions put forward by the company and if you're more adept at setting up a foolproof system on your website then register with the company directly. It will also help you negotiate a special agreement that will offer much higher payments in relation to registration with the networks.

Keep in mind that affiliate networks are nothing but sites like yours who register as affiliate master. In setting up their infrastructure, monitoring, etc., they allow various other people to sign them. What happens in this case is that affiliate networks are affiliates master, then you become a sub affiliate. So what this means is that the extra commission earned by the networks for sales that you give some of it is used to provide you with better service. And there are some networks which also charge you a fee for certain transactions. But do not think that signing up directly will be a better deal. Because although this will provide you interact directly with the company and in most cases, with the account manager, you will be 100% of your monitor and other problems that might arise.

So if you're ready to make money and serious effort to market a product, then go ahead, there's no better way to do that through affiliate marketing and no, I do talking about Google AdSense here.

About the author: John Benjamin works as a freelance consultant for Internet Marketing. His website has various articles listed at http://www.promindsinc.com