Promote Residual Affiliate Programs

Eugenijus Sakalauskas

This interesting article addresses some of the key issues  regarding Affiliate marketing. A careful reading of this material  could make a big difference in how you think about  Affiliate marketing.

Are you a webmaster in need of additional income? Or  are you planning to set up an online business but you still  don't have any product to sell? If so, affiliate marketing  may be the best solution for your problems. With affiliate  marketing, you won't need to worry about the products you  have to sell. All you need to have is a website with  sufficient contents that are related to the products of a  certain online company offering affiliate programs.  By becoming a member of the program, or by becoming an affiliate,  you can start earning a certain amount of money right away!

Affiliate marketing is some sort of business relationship  established between a merchant and his affiliates. In affiliate  marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some traffic to a  merchant's website. If that traffic is converted into some  kind of action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the  merchant's website or a visitor becoming a lead for the company,  the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated.  Compensation may take the form of either a percentage sales  commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined  upon the application of the affiliate on the merchant's  affiliate program.

Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the  affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most  popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost every  merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program that  any one can join into. Most retailers would entice people to  become affiliates or members of their program by promising great  benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click  through incomes and a lot of other benefits. But would all  these affiliate programs bring off the same benefits?

Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a  one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought to the  merchant's website. Commissions for this kind of affiliate  programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a high of about  60%. Other affiliate programs would pay you a fixed fee for every  click through or traffic you send to the merchant's site.  Programs like this often pay a smaller fee for every click through,  usually not getting any larger than half a dollar. The good  thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor  won't have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to  get compensated.

Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate  program. Residual affiliate programs usually pay only a small  percentage of sales commission for every sale directed by the  affiliate to the merchant's site. This commission often comes  only in the range of 10% to 20% sales commission. Because of  this, many people ignore residual affiliate program and would  rather opt for the high paying one-time commission affiliate  program. Are these people making a mistake, or are they making  the right decision?

We can't tell, for sure, if people are making a mistake by choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate program. But we can  definitely say that they are making a large mistake if they ignore  residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs would  indeed pay at a lower rate, but merchants offering such kind of  programs would generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions  for a single affiliate initiated sale! That means, for the same  effort you made in promoting a particular affiliate program, you  get paid only once in a one-time commission program, and a regular  and ongoing commission for a residual program!

So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs  clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? If they are still  vague, then let's make them a bit clearer with this example.

Suppose there are two online merchants both offering web hosting  services on their sites. The first merchant offers a one-time  commission type of affiliate program that pays $80 for every  single affiliate initiated sale. The second merchant also offers  an affiliate program, but this time a residual affiliate program  that pays only $10 for every single affiliate initiated sale.  As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first  merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10.  But by thinking things over before actually getting into them,  one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering us  more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.

Supposed you have directed traffic to the merchant and it converted  into a sale, you'll get paid once by the first merchant for the  sale you have initiated. But with the second merchant, you'll get  paid monthly for as long as the customer you have referred to the  merchant continues to avail of the web hosting service. That  means that for the same effort of getting one customer to avail  of the merchant's service, you get paid monthly in residual  affiliate programs while you only get paid once in a one-time  commission type of affiliate programs.

So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting? Definitely  yes, because you virtually get more money from these types of  affiliate programs in the long run! And would residual affiliate  programs work best for you? Probably not, probably yes. It is  not really for me to tell. But with the benefits that residual  affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to  ignore such programs.

There's no doubt that the topic of Affiliate marketing can be fascinating.  If you still have unanswered questions about Affiliate marketing, you  may find what you're looking for in the next article.

Eugenijus Sakalauskas E-Ezine - Free marketing recourses, website promotion tips Subscribe to our FREE Internet home business and website marketing secrets E-course. and Get $247 value an amazing 15 bonuses now. http://ezine.pluginnetproefit.com/ http://pluginnetproefit.com/ Subscribe: mailto:plugin@freefollowup.com

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