Affiliate Programs: What Are They and How Can They Help or Hurt Your BusinessAre you using affiliate programs as additional income generation for your existing small business, home based business or MLM? If you are, congratulations and thank you for being a leader! If not you are missing out on hundreds if not thousands of dollars each month. 
According to Wiki-pedia ...Affiliate Programs are a popular method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per sale), or any combination. Most attractive aspect of affiliate marketing, from the merchant's viewpoint, is that with this pay for performance model, no payment is due to an affiliate until results are realized. (From Wiki-pedia) Affiliate programs offer ways to monetize your existing customer base by offering related, complimentary products and services. This is an awesome way to add more value and also deepen your relationship with clients and customers as a growing resource for great service. What Are Affiliate Programs and How Do You Find The Right One(s) For You?They work very similar to Multi-level Marketing except the focus is more on moving a product/service on the front end and then offers the user the opportunity to become a reseller on the back end. This allows you an automated way to "recruit" other affiliates. These programs don't usually have more than two levels of compensation so not to be fully characterized as MLM. some examples include: A Brief History Lesson: Amazon's Story(from Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants by Shawn Collins)"As the story goes, affiliate marketing all started at a cocktail party. Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com (www.amazon.com), was chatting with a party guest who wanted to sell books on her web site. "This got Bezos thinking. Why not have the woman link her site to Amazon’s and receive a commission on the books that she sold? Soon after, Amazon introduced the "Amazon Associates Program". It was a simple idea. Amazon associates would place banner or text links on their site for individual books or link directly to the Amazon’s home page. "When visitors clicked from the associate’s site through to Amazon.com and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. With that thought, Bezos created Amazon.com’s affiliate program in July 1996." When you are considering which programs to promote it comes down to relevance to your target market. For example If you have a health and wellness themed businessan amazon program featuring books on the subject work fit in. So would gym membership referrals, health and fitness related e-books, etc. If you were a webmaster, a www.GoDaddy.com and other web hosting affiliate programs would work well too. There are so many options you can chose to promote with whichrange from home decor/ interior design, financial services and waterless auto care to attraction marketing training and automated lead generation. How Do I Promote My Programs?If you have a website you have creative control over it is as simple as weaving in the words on your page or hosting a banner at the side or bottom or anywhere you like.
If you have a blog or a social network profile(s) you can do the same thing but usually not with as much leverage unless you own the network (ie. FaceBook and Myspace who make all there money from the banner ads they support, take that as a *hint* to the power of affiliate programs) Also, if you already have an existing network you can simply send out an email promoting the feature, benefits and advantages and a percentage of those (based on how well you write, the relevanceof that new information to that lists interest, and your relationship with your list) will review and or make a purchase. Where Do I Find Good Affiliate Programs?You can go to LinkShare.com Most have no sign up fees very few others require you purchase the product first in order to become an affiliate. Don't let this deter you... It's actually better for you if you know as much about the product as you can so you can speak (and write) about it with sincere conviction if you decide to do more than merely host a banner on your page. Some pay per lead, some pay per lead AND each purchase that comes through that lead. Some time the lead is only linked to youfor a certain amount of time from when they "click" on your affiliate link till the time the actually make a purchase that can vary from 6 months to a year and sometimes even longer. You want to read the details about how how and when you get paid for each individual program. because not all are created equal. Further more, you will want to make sure you don't run into non-competition clauses which will restrict you promoting two or more competing products. Here's a case study where that was a problem: Read Allan's case study and follow ups here ==> http://case-studies.sitesell.com/affiliatemarketing-ag-1.html Depending on the niche market of your home based business you want to make sure you are using at least one program that helps you to personally capture the contact information ofyou customer. This is another form of automated leadgeneration for you! Obviously, you want to use affiliate programs as additional monetization AND automated lead generation because peoplelooking for the products/information you market will find your website or blog page (among others). Once they find you they will become part of your marketing network when they buy or inquire about more information. What would you like to do now? See which affiliate programs I recommend. Meet me, The Internetwork Marketer here now. Schedule private coaching for developing your ideal affiliate marketing mix. Grab Your *Free Ezine*: Double Your Downline
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