| Top Ten Recommended Programmes | Free Webmaster Resources | Home Page | Free Affiliate Masters Course |
Share A Sale - Pay per lead and pay per sale affiliate programs
|
|
A sort of tips and terminology, if you like! Not an in depth or comprehensive glossary of all affiliate marketing terminology, but hopefully a useful guide to some of the most common ones, with a few helpful hints and tips sprinkled in for good measure.A - is of course for affiliate or affiliates (that's you and me) - somebody who is earning money, (usually from a website and/or email newsletter) by linking to merchants. Should these clicks results in a sale or lead, an affiliate earns a commission. Commission Junction calls their affiliates 'publishers' and uses the following definition "...(also referred to as an Affiliate, Associate, Partner, Reseller or Content Site) - an independent party, or Web site, that promotes the products or services of an advertiser in exchange for a commission".
B - is for banners - many surfers ignore these, so it is better to focus on text links and to try and 'add value' by comparing / reviewing different products or services, or prices or by showing how you use a particular product or service and why you recommend it to others.
C - is for commission - the percentage you earn from each sale. Once you are getting a decent amount of sales for a particular merchant, you can always ask them nicely for an increase in your commission - some merchants offer higher commission and bonus incentives automatically for higher sales. C is also for cookies, not chocolate chip cookies, but the non edible variety - a very small text file placed on your hard drive. They are important to affiliates, because a cookie identifies the visitor as having come through your link and ensures that you get credit for the sale. Length is important too - the longer a cookie lasts for, the more time there is for you to get a commission. For example, a seven day cookie expires after seven days, so if somebody visits via your link on day one, but goes back to the marchants site on day 6 and buys the product - you still get the commission (even if they typed in the merchants web site directly on day 6). So yes, the longer the cookie the better your chance of getting a sale.
C is also for cpa which stands for 'cost per action' - for example if a merchant is willing to pay you $1 for every request for a free catalogue, that is classed as a CPA campaign or offer - you get a set amount for a specific action rather than a commission on a sale. An example of an affiliate network with lots of CPA offers is MaxBounty.
C is also for conversion ratio - the number of visitors to a merchants site who take a desired action (usually the percentage of visitors who make a purchase, but it could also mean the percentage who fill in a form requesting further information, sign up to a newsletter, request a free catalogue, etc). If, for every 100 visitors that visit a merchants site, 2 of them make a purchase, then the conversion ratio for that site is 2%. Your aim as an affiliate should be to 'pre qualify' or pre-sell your visitors so that when they arrive at the merchants site they are in a 'ready to buy' frame of mind.
D - is for domains and anybody serious about their affiliate marketing will need to buy a domain name. Try to choose something memorable, short and related to the subject of your site. You can include your most important keyword or keywords in the domain, as this may help with search engine ranking. You can buy a domain name or check availability at 123-reg. Try to get a .com and if possible the .net as well, to protect your name. If you are in the UK, get a .co.uk domain name. Don't worry too much about the other extensions - .info etc. Deep linking - sending your visitors to the merchants home page and expecting them to find their way to the product is a classic newbie mistake - make it as easy as possible for your visitor to buy - when you have presold them on that shiny new digital camera send them straight to the product page with that add to cart button! (Deep linking simply means an affiliate link which does this)
D is also for diversify - it's important not to put all your eggs in one basket and to have a variety of income streams so that if one of them dries up you still have some money coming in. In internet time things can change overnight - new Google adwords policies, search engine algorithm can change resulting in loss of rankings, merchants can end their affiliate programs, etc, etc The answer is to diversify by using various methods (pay per click, organic search, blogs, newsletters, articles) to get traffic to your sites and to have different sites on different topics with different merchants. The time of year is also important - not many people will be buying swimming shorts in the middle of winter, but if you have a site with blankets and woolly hats you could be in the money. Flowers sell well in February (Valentines Day of course); Home Gyms sell best in January (New Years resolutions) and just about everything sells well in the run up to Christmas as the gift buying frenzy gets into full swing! Smart affiliates have a number of sites to take advantage of seasonal trends so that while their bbq site sales are sizzling in summer they are getting their treadmills site ready for when all those joggers want to come indoors over winter.
E - is for epc, usually means 'average earnings per one hundred clicks' but can also mean 'earnings per click' at some networks. These statistics are available at certain networks including cj sas mb There are many variables which can influence an EPC figure, so don't use them as your sole basis for judging a program. For example, if a merchant has a free sweepstakes / competition on their website they may get thousands of clicks from visitors who just want to enter the contest and only a tiny percentage of these may buy anything - resulting in a very low EPC. However, if you are advertising a product and are sending people directly to a product page on that merchants site your EPC should be much higher.
F - is for flexibility - be flexible with your affiliate marketing efforts - what works for you now may at some stage become less effective, and you will need to try a different approach. The internet changes so rapidly that an affiliates income does fluctuate rather a lot - you could lose a good search engine ranking, your best merchant may change their terms or even end their affiliate program... so once you start earning a decent amount put some away for a rainy day. Diversify, don't put all your eggs in one basket, and have different websites, different merchants and income sources (pay per lead, pay per sale, adsense, pay per click advertising, seo, etc). Like anything worthwhile in life it also takes time and effort - put in the hours and the rewards should eventually follow, but don't expect overnight results or to make a fortune from whacking up a few banners. The often quoted 5% of affiliates who earn 90% of the money are, as has been said, those who take the time to analyze the merchants web site and build pages designed to attract the people who are most likely to make a purchase. Don't give up - find a niche (or several), avoid the highly competitive markets if you are a beginner (credit cards, casinos, etc); put in the hours, and the financial rewards will eventually follow.
H - is for hosting - a good web host is essential - an unreliable webhost can mean downtime for your site resulting in lost sales and commissions. Good, reliable web hosting companies include Site 5 Hosting and Hostway. Web hosting is one of the 2 essential things you need to get started online in affiliate marketing - your own domain name being the other one. Once you have your domain and somewhere to host it, you own your piece of cyberspace - your bit of property on the web. Next step - build that site, upload it and start getting some traffic!
I - is for information - most people go online to search for information, either about a problem (offering them a solution is one key to affiliate success) or for information on a product (offering enough information in order for them to make a purchase is another key to affiliate success). Information/ knowledge is also power and while it can be very easy to become overwhelmed by information (information overload) about internet marketing, there is a lot to be said for educating yourself and learning about different tips and techniques. Sign up for a couple of good newsletters to keep up to date and try the free affiliate masters course. Good quality information (in the form of useful, interesting and helpful content) is the key to long term success for your websites - go for quality, stand out from the mediocre and the dross and like cream in milk you will eventually rise to the top.
| Top Ten Recommended Programmes | Webmaster Resources | Free Internet Marketing Newsletter |
|
|