Power Ideaz

    By Pinaki Ghosh

The affiliate marketing is the name of one of the oldest systems of carrying on business and getting clients by referral in exchange of commission. For example if I refer a positive client to you, you will not mind paying me a percentage of the payment that you get from the client.  This is widely practiced in the web-world and such programs are called affiliate marketing programs. When you sign up with a merchant, you get a java code for their banner, and all you have to do is paste the code with the HTML code of your site. Soon after, the banners will appear on your site. An account will be maintained in your name with the merchant, and you will get a percentage of the payment that come to them from your referrals.

1. Keep it neat
Of course the first thought of a novice webmaster is that, the more affiliate banners that one plant in someone’s website, more are his chances of getting higher returns. Their main aim is to fill up the pages with banners and more banners. Wherever you look, there are affiliate banners. In reality, visitors hate visiting pages with lots of banners. You have to restrain yourself to make your site look decent which does not repel visitors.

2. Affiliate programs work in different ways for different webmasters
This kind of a program does not keep any room for returns for you but definitely gives the site owners high returns. These programs show different results on the different sites. If you are keen and keep your vision focused in the affiliate market forums, you will find at least one member complaining that his returns for a particular program have been very dull, while another member saying exactly the opposite words for the same affiliate program. Commission Junction (www.cj.com) or Clickbank (www.clickbank.com), eAds (www.eads.com), Teknosurf (www.teknosurf.com), ValueClick (www.valueclick.com), Safe Audit (www.safe-audit.com) and Demoz (www.dmoz) are some of the biggest affiliate program exchanges.

3. Go for multiple merchant affiliate marketing for the same niche
At all cost you can place affiliate banners of 3 – 4 merchants who fall under the same category, or niche. This is not unethical; rather it is helpful for visitors who have a choice. Let earnings come from several sources rather than one.

4. Check out the commission offered
50% or even more commission is offered for each referral again which is quite good! You shouldn’t settle for a program that offers les than 20% commission.

5. Give importance to the status and look of the site
 You must go in for a site that has a high status and also looks good. If you refer your visitors to a shabby site which is full of advertisements and has nothing more to offer, you are unlikely to get much business from the site.

6. How is their support?
Go through the areas like support that the merchant-site is going to provide you with. The Online support for your queries or live telephone support is extremely good. Online replies that come after more than 3 days does not work in your favor and you should not settle for such a site. The reports and automated statistics that are provided should be up to the mark.

7. Run newsletter campaigns for the merchant
Keeping the active newsletter campaigns running from your website with the banners of the merchant site, instead of just placing the cold banners on your site increases the conversion ratio, and also boosts your earnings from the affiliate marketing.
Almost all the small websites with a 400+ hits every day make $100 - $300 with affiliate marketing from a single website every month. If you run newsletter campaigns this return can be in the area of $450 to $600. Isn’t that simply great!

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Making Money on the Internet, Small Business, Uncategorized, Woman Entrepreneur. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.