Tuesday, December 30, 2008

All About Affiliate Marketing Program

By Don Bethune

Affiliate marketing are a group of marketing programs which allow advertisers to reimburse webmasters for putting up advertisements on their webpage or within the e-mails they send. In the same way an particular company would pay for space in the newspaper or on a billboard, they pay for space on your website.

The simplicity of being participating in affiliate marketing programs has made it one of the most well known ways to earn income without leaving home. These programs allows just about anyone, housewives, the elderly, the homebound, to have their own 'home business' and gain monetary freedom.

So just how do advertisers pay the webmasters hosting their ads? First, it is important to understand how sites are ranked when someone searches the web. Simply, the more hits a website receives per day the higher it is listed when a user performs a web search with a search engine. This in turn makes a frequently visited website have even more hits.

The more traffic a website receives, the more likely someone browsing it is to click through an ad link placed on the website. Paying for ad space on more popular sites can result in hundreds of new customers each day. Advertising space is therefore priced based on the hits that the website receives.

Advertisers using affiliate marketing programs to place ads on a website other than their own arrange payments into several different reimbursement types or payment scales. Some of the most common pay scales are referred to as per click, per thousand, per action, per lead, and many others.

In a pay per click the advertiser pays the webmaster each time a web site user clicks on the hosted ad. Likewise, in the per thousand click scale the webmaster is paid for every thousand times a web user clicks on the ad's link. A per action scenario requires that the web user must not only click through the ad link, but also complete a particular action, such as filling out customer information, signing up for a contest, or perhaps completing a purchase before payment is generated to the webmaster. Another payment scale type is cost per lead which is similar to cost per action, but the webmaster sends potential customer information to the advertiser much like one company you purchase airline tickets for might sell your information to their credit card company.

How do you as a webmaster choose the right affiliate marketing program for your websites? Many webmasters simply search the internet! The best way to determine which program best suits your site is to search for affiliate programs, evaluate the payments schedules offered, and determine if ad placement is suitable for your site based on size and location requirements.

Income from affiliate marketing can vary widely and is highly dependent on the number of hits your website receives. Another consideration is that part or all of the income generated may be considered taxable income on the city, state, or federal level; it is best to check with your local tax office. Regardless, the income potential is boundless and worth looking into if you have the space on your website. - 15465

About the Author: