How Does An Affiliate Program Actually Work?

In this day and age, it’s so easy to set up your own website, that just about anybody could do it. Providing you have access to a computer and the internet, you can go to just about any web site builder and use one of their templates to create a personal web page. It literally takes a couple of hours, and then in a flash, your page is available on the web! One way people can utilise their personal web page, is by joining an affiliate program. These programs are especially effective if you have a content driven site with lots of traffic! Want to know how an affiliate program works, and how you could benefit? Read on to learn more:

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In Simple Terms

In simple terms, an affiliate program (which can also sometimes be called an associate program) is an arrangement where an online merchant pays affiliate websites to send traffic to them for commission.

The affiliate website will post a link on their site to the merchant site and they get paid depending on the agreement made. This agreement will normally depend on the amount of people the website sends to them, or the number of people who buy something (or perform a similar action). The merchant basically pays the affiliate for sending them traffic or money!

The reason merchants decide to use affiliates is because it’s a simple way of selling their products, as well as an effective marketing strategy.

One site that is popular with affiliates is Amazon. The founder Jeff Bezos made this idea popular in 1996, and now they have over 500,000 affiliate websites helping to sell their products.

The Payment Arrangements

The usual payment arrangements for affiliate sites, are as follows:

• Pay-per-sale arrangement – the Amazon arrangement we mentioned earlier is a pay-per-sale arrangement. This is where the merchant site pays the affiliate when they send them a customer who goes on to buy something. Amazon and certain other sites pay a percentage of the sale, while others pay a fixed amount.

• Pay-per-click arrangement – in this arrangement, the affiliate gets paid when a person lands on a site through a link that they’ve posted. They don’t have to buy anything, and what the visitor does when they land on the site doesn’t matter.

• Pay-per-lead arrangement – companies who offer this arrangement pay their affiliates based on the amount of people who enter some information on the merchant site. This is valuable to the merchant as they can then use it as a sales lead.

There you have it – now you know how affiliate programs work! If you have a website they are a great way to drive sales and conversions, but if you simply run your own personal content site you could use affiliate programs as a way to get a bit more money coming in. Either way, affiliate programs earn you more cash, and the best thing about it is that it couldn’t be easier. Get on board to see what the fuss is about!