An Affiliate Marketer from the Ground Up

An affiliate is a business person involved in Internet marketing that can earns commissions
utilizing several different methods. Commissions may be earned as easily as generating a
lead for the merchant company paying the commission. The lead might be the potential
customer filling out a simple form, giving varying amounts of personal information. Sometimes
nothing more than their name and email address.

Depending on the company, a commission might not be paid unless there is actually a sale
generated. Most times there is also a period in which the commission can be resended, as
when the customer returns a purchased item, cancels the order or anything else that would
cause the merchant to lose their sale.

Also an affiliate can earn commissions on a CPA basis. CPA is an acronym for Cost Per Action.
An action can be just a click.

In the ‘affiliate arbitrage’ form of earning commissions, in the case of PPC (Pay Per Click)
the affiliate is paid the difference in the cost being charged for the cumulative clicks, and
the commissions being paid for the sales or leads that the clicks generate. This is a very
tough market for the new affiliate. The general consensus would undoubtedly be for the
new affiliate to start off having their own Website, and trying to generate traffic, possibly
only ‘organic’ traffic, until a better understanding of the business is acquired.

It is reported that PPC programs are not growing at the rate of days gone by, partial due to
click fraud, although newer technologies have, at least somewhat, diminished the number of cases
of fraud. Many PPC advertisers are also being quoted as saying that it is getting harder to make
the same amount of money that was possible at one time. Some say this is due to refined software
technologies leaning towards the search engine companies when generating the cost per click to
charge the advertisers, versus what is being paid out to the advertiser. Although many companies
and individuals alike are making substantial amounts of money. The best advice that can be given
to the newcomer to PPC advertising, would be to read and study everything you can before risking
your money. Most of the larger search engine companies offer very attractive , tempting offers
in the form of vouchers to get the would be PPC advertiser to open an account. It takes usually
only a very small amount of the advertisers money, in relation to the voucher amount, to have an
account and your ads being shown to the searchers. The problem many, many individuals run into
is that they often find themselves paying more per click than they are bringing in. Even though
a check of their affiliate commissions may look very rewarding. In fact it’s less than what
was spent to earn the commissions thereby creating a negative ROI (return on investment).

To those interested in PPC advertising, it cannot be stressed enough to exercise extreme
patience before you lay your own money out to start your first PPC campaign. YOU MUST
WATCH THE NUMBERS VERY CLOSELY. Know when you are ‘in the red’. All search engine companies
lag in reporting their statistics, often at least several hours, on having accurate statistical
updates posted, showing the number of clicks, cost per click and the other pertinent information
that you need to be aware of. A software tool to track your information, clicks, conversions etc.
is a new tool called ‘Tracking202′. It is a free online tool that you can find at Tracking202.com.

Becoming an affiliate is usually a very easy process. Usually it’s nothing more than clicking
a link on the merchants Website, and giving your personal information. Normally you can expect
to give your Social Security Number or Taxpayer ID number for tax purposes, as well as the
basic information of your name, address and most likely a Website URL. Sometimes the potential
affiliate is approved automatically, but this could also take several days if the Website must
be checked out to see if it meets the merchants requirements. It’s probably just as common
possibly more so, to apply to affiliate programs through an Affiliate Network that handles many
merchant accounts. This makes it possible to apply for multiple programs via one Website.
Some of the better known Affiliate Networks are Commission Junction, NeverBlueAds and LinkShare.

Regardless of how or where you apply for an affiliate program, once accepted the affiliate
marketer is given a unique code, sometimes as a text link, or other times embedded in any
number of different sized and shaped banner or button ads. This code is used to track
the actions of a would be customer, and the affiliate that generated any action.

Becoming an Affiliate Marketer is very attractive for many people. You’re able to work from home
with usually nothing more than a computer and an Internet connection. Obviously, a printer and
other peripherals are usually helpful, if not necessary. Also, the affiliate can usually decide what hours
they’ll work, aothough you should make yourself available during normal business hours.

As much as anything else, one other very good aspect of being an affiliate, is the fact that there
is no physical inventory to be stocked, shipped, ordered or returned by a customer. There is
also no need to worry about routine out-of-pocket business expenses such as postage and shipping.

Possibly the single biggest reason people often give for enjoying being an affiliate, is the fact
that they are their own boss. Business owners have enjoyed this sought after reward since commerce began.

Quite possibly, the biggest potential downfall to Affiliate Marketing is that you must have the
discipline and determination to do what must be done to keep your business being a financial success.

Again, it’s highly recommended that you start off slowly, learning all you can before you risk
any, or at least much of you money, until you start to get a feel for the business.

When you set up your Website(s), make sure you get a good hosting company. The two recommended by
this author, are Bluehost and HostGator. There are of course many other very suitable vendors
willing and able to do the job at hand for you. The two mentioned hosts have withstood the test
of time and also offer very attractive pricing/services packages. Keeping their software and
security updated regularly also.

This is just meant to be a very general guide to becoming an affiliate, it cannot be stressed enough
that you must research extensively before starting this, or any other business venture. Affiliate Marketing
can be a fantastic, rewarding business for those taking the necessary steps to succeed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under The Basics of Affiliate Marketing. 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.