Affiliate Program Basics

Affiliate Program is a ground floor opportunity. All you have to do is send visitors to your affiliate web site by placing a textlink or banner on your website and receive a commission on each sale, without the complication and expense of selling anything yourself.

Instead, you earn a commission for producing a transaction. Affiliate programs, also known as Referral Programs, Associate Programs, Profit Sharing Programs or Reseller programs, give affiliates the ability to create an online business selling thousands products and services.

One of the first affiliate programs was run by the mega- bookstore, Amazon.com. They still have the largest base of affiliates on the net although they may not be the best affiliate program for many! with over 600,000 web sites being affiliated.

Affiliate programs are generally offered by sites selling goods or services, although some affiliate programs reward other types of transaction such as getting a visitor to sign up for a free newsletter, or a download.

Some affiliate programs pay per lead rather than per sale, in other words, you bring them a prospective customer and they pay a fixed "finder's fee" for the chance to market to that customer.

This is a typical arrangement for affiliate programs in the insurance, real estate and credit card industries, for example:

Types of Affiliate Programs

Pay per sale: If you refer a visitor to the online merchant's site and if visitor makes a purchase you get a percentage of the sale as commission.

Pay per lead: You get paid a one-time fee for generating a lead for the merchant. Usually you get paid $2-$5 if the visitor you referred fills out an application.

Pay per click: You get paid for every visitor you send to the online merchant regardless of any sale or purchase. Usually companies pay $0.05 - $0.15 per click.

Two-Tier: You get commission on direct sales you generate and also you get commission on sales generated by affiliates you recruited. Usually companies pay 25% commission for direct sales and 5% for sales generated by your affiliates.

Bounty: You get a one-time finder's fee payment for the visitor you referred. You will not get commission on any future purchases that customer makes.

The Benefit of an Affiliate Program

Is that you just need to drive traffic to your affiliate site. Write a few articles and provide a few links.

You don't need to find or deal with brokers, wholesalers, inventory, process orders, shipping & handling, customer service, tech support, handle returns, warranties, employees, etc-

An affiliate doesn't even have to be present, your site will keep earning money while you're sick, on vacation, or just doing something else.

Another advantage of being an affiliate, is that you do it from almost anywhere in the world..

How The System Works?

When you join an affiliate program, you will be given a specially formatted URL (Links) that you should use to link to the affiliate provider's site.

This will enable the affiliate provider to monitor traffic to your site and pay according to the type of affiliate program.

Many affiliate programs pay a commission based on a percentage of the revenue generated by purchases made by visitors coming from your website.

For example; if you're participating in an affiliate program that offers a 25% commission and you

send a visitor who purchases US$100 worth of products, you've just earned US$25 in commissions.

The commission rate itself can vary from 20% up- to 50%+ in the case of intangible products such as eBooks or website subscriptions.

Affiliate programs vary widely in terms of overall quality, reliability, commission, statistics, the amount of help that the merchant site offers in marketing the products or services it sells, and so on.

By thoroughly understanding an affiliate program, you'll minimize the risk of not getting paid - and maximize your potential earnings.

Albert Hallado Owner of netbizreview.com (Guide To Internet Based Business) Albert is known for interviewing online business experts and Helping Entrepreneurs Doing Business On The Internet

Affiliate marketing offers earning opportunities, making it as one of the fastest growing industry in the World Wide Web today. It produces billions of dollars worth of income yearly. That is why many people are getting involved in it.

However, most of them are just getting into the jive of earning money without a concrete plan. You will have no strategies to be implemented, no guidelines to be followed.

In case that you are planning to get yourself involved in affiliate marketing, bear in your mind that it is a serious work. Though it is one of the easier ways of earning additional income, it still requires effort, perseverance, and a clear plan of action from your starting point up to the finish line.

An affiliate site that I highly recommend, that trains you and helps you get a clear plan of action is SITE BUILD IT (SBI). Why?

Here's why.. Many major universities (ex., University of Arizona), and colleges and even MBA programs include SBI! in their curriculum. No other online busineness building program has gained acceptance by the educational sector like SBI!

In addition to universities, stellar companies such as Clickbank and AdBrite recommend SBI! to their hundreds of thousands of affiliates and publishers. The reason is simple. SBI! makes them more effective online.

Only SBI! has garnered this type of support. Because only Site Build It! actually builds online success.

I speak from experience because I'm an owner of an SBI site myself and I can't believe how profitable this site can be. I love the traffic that I get from SBI. Everyone knows that traffic is the lifeblood of any online business. Only Site Build It! (SBI!) delivers the holy grail, traffic. Targeted traffic. Motivated, interested, warm, willing-to-buy visitors. That spells SUCCESS!!!