Affiliate Marketing

| Posted: 27-10-2007 | Comments: 0 | Views: 9 | Rating: (52)

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While affiliate marketing was once viewed as an oddity, it has quickly grown into the most important and effective form of Web-based marketing. At its best, affiliate marketing has the weight of a personal recommendation. This viral, word-of-mouth-meets-email approach has accelerated the success of an array of Web-based merchants.

For the Affiliate

The affiliate model gives the little guy a piece of the action. You don't need a huge investment of capital—only some knowledge of the Web's HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the love of a subject, and an understanding of the ways of the Internet- If you can turn what you know into an effective Web site, you can turn that Web site into a moneymaker.

Affiliate programs are about more than just making money. They're about saving money too. Many affiliate programs allow you to purchase goods through your own affiliate links—effectively paying yourself the affiliate commission. This can lead to substantial savings, especially when the merchant offers exceptionally high referral fees (such as in a promotional period, when rates can be 20 percent or more).

Check the individual program rules before you go wild purchasing through your own links. Some merchants take a firm stance on the issue. For example, not only does Amazon not pay associates for purchasing through their own links, they also reserve the right to kick associates out of their program. Nonetheless, there are plenty of booksellers that do allow their affiliates to earn commission fees on their own purchases.

For the Merchant

Associate programs supersede traditional sales, marketing, and advertising programs. To attract customers in the conventional retail world, a traditional brick-and-mortar store incurs considerable expense. This expense is spread over a number of media:

• Print advertising in local newspapers
• Phone book advertising
• Direct mail collateral
• Radio and television commercials

Once the brick-and-mortar store has lured the customer through the doors, additional resources are applied for floor and window displays. Sales staff have to be walking the floor and behind the cash registers. The floor salesperson answers questions and provides recommendations—all to steer the customer to the right selection.

The Web demolishes that model. Doing business in the virtual world lessens the need for traditional printed advertising. A Web catalog house has no need for a printed catalog. A Web grocery doesn't stuff circulars into your local newspaper. A Web travel agent doesn't depend on full-page advertisements in the phone book.

Of course, in this interim time, traditional advertising media are bursting with www.this and dotcom.that. Web merchants are using conventional media to build their brand awareness. Most of the merchants' televisions commercials, for example, stress corporate identity, rather than driving sales of a specific product.

Researching and buying products on the Web is an entirely different process than in the real world. As a whole, buyers find the products that interest them. This lessens the producer's responsibility to find the buyer. Choices are not limited to what the brick-and-mortar store has featured in its advertising campaign that week.

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Article Tags: Affiliate Marketing, Affiliates, Traffic, Affiliates Program

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Shonda Miles is a business consultant and business coach. Gotta Take Action provides informative articles and advice to women-owned businesses who are ready to skyrocket their profits. Learn more about how to catapult your business success by visiting http://www.gottatakeaction.com for more information. If you enjoyed this article, join our newsletter Hot Marketing Tips today.

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