So what is affiliate program and how it can be used to make money with.
Affiliate program can also be called partner program. Registering to affiliate program you get affiliate links/banners which you place on your site. These links are tracked by special scripts and every user that comes to seller’s site from your site and makes purchase is recorded and you are paid the commission of the amount paid for the product.
It is obviously profitable both for advertiser and publisher. From the advertiser point of view an advantage is that he/she is paying for advertising only if there was made a purchase, and thus expenses are covered with the return. For the publisher, you are paid for every sale made from your website.
Affiliate programs use cookies to keep records about all visits from affiliate websites. Different programs offer different terms of cookies, but approximately they are about a year. That means that you get your commission even if user came from you website makes purchase even 11 months later.
It is really easy to use affiliate programs, but to make good money with them demands some strategy.
So first what you need to do is to be sure that you are not the only person visiting your website. Like any other program, affiliate program will work only if you have enough visitors on your website.
The second is to choose the best affiliate program. The main criterion is to choose the product in the subject of the page you plan to place link to affiliate program. Directory from that point of view has an advantage. Every category can be a separate subject for affiliate program. Let’s see an example: you have the directory collecting web resources. There are few categories: scripts and programs; web templates and SEO resources. Thus you can choose one or few affiliate programs to sell scripts, templates and SEO books for example. And post links or banners in the relevant category. And your visitors looking, for example, for particular script can see affiliate one, click and buy.
Placing affiliate links and banners on the home page also produces good results if affiliate program is offering products corresponding to the subject of you directory.
The advice is to choose few but not many affiliate programs.
But how to choose the best selling affiliate program? It is not an easy question to answer. First you need to do is to check the product yourself. Think if you consider it is qualitative and needed. Answer if you would like to have it. Check services the company is offering: such as shipping, support, promo actions, coupons and discounts, and others. Read reviews of clients, if there are some. Think about this product as about something you have in your store to sell to your customers. You are responsible for the quality of resources on your website.
The abuse of affiliate links can harm your directory as well as abuse of any kind of advertisement.
Some people do not like to click on affiliate links. Or you may want your links look aesthetically. You can use eSyndiCat plugin ‘Display URL’. This option will show fake URL you enter instead of the real one, giving the sense of direct link.
As you can see it is easy and does not require any special knowledge to use affiliate program.
If you want to build affiliate program to advertise you products try also our eLitius Affiliate Tracking Software. All features of this powerful and user-friendly script you can find on www.elitius.com.
