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There are many different Affiliate Network management systems available. You have to select the best one so that you can get good profit and your Affiliate Networks are also happy. This article explains 10 most important things that should be present in a great Affiliate Network management system, so you would be able to run your Affiliate Network marketing business easily:

1) Complete control over recruitment of Affiliate Networks:

This is the basic requirement of any Affiliate Network management system because if you don\’t have control over the number of Affiliate Networks joining and promoting your Affiliate Network program you might be soon end up in loss or some spammers or your competitor may try to break down your Affiliate Network system and create loss in your business. So, wisely choose the Affiliate Network management system which provides complete control over the Affiliate Networks so you would be able to contact them, offer them help, request information and keep in-touch.

2) Offer multiple payment options for your customers and Affiliate Networks:

Your Affiliate Networks are distributed geographically all over the world. In one region particular payment option will be available and the same will not be available in some other region. PayPal is a good option because they are almost present in all countries but you can\’t withdraw the money in some countries like Egypt where you can use MoneyBookers to withdraw the money. So, your Affiliate Network management system should enable your Affiliate Networks to receive the payment via lot of payment processors else they will not work for you. Offer as much Affiliate Network payment options as possible and then you will have no problem getting your product promoted!

3) Affiliate Network visitor and sales tracking is a must – track as much details as possible:

The Affiliate Network management system should be able to provide you the ratio between the number of visitors and the sales made by them. This can help you to find out your best Affiliate Network and reward your best Affiliate Network every month it will create a healthy competition among your Affiliate Networks and you will enjoy the benefits of it. You must be able to track all details of your Affiliate Networks activities: views and visitors that your Affiliate Networks bring, the number of sales, conversion rates of your promotional partners, refund rates. Some systems even allow you to track the websites referring sales to your website and even keywords used on search engines to find and buy your products.

4) Affiliate Network reward system based on their performance:

The Affiliate Network management system should not give the same amount of commission to all your Affiliate Networks i.e., it should provide more commission to those who bring quality traffic and make good sales and should give somewhat less commission to poor performers. So, that your good Affiliate Networks will try to work even harder to get more commission per sale. Make sure to select the system that allows you to set custom Affiliate Network commission percentages for each certain Affiliate Network. Then you will be able to reward your best performing ones!

5) Ban the Affiliate Networks if they use illegal methods – Affiliate Network BAN mechanism :

Some of your Affiliate Networks may bring traffic to your site by spamming or by redirecting their browser in malicious manner and some may buy your product if they like it but more than 95% visitors will consider your site to be malicious site and trying to spam them. So, it will bring bad reputation to your business hence, your Affiliate Network management system should identify these Affiliate Networks and ban them. Your Affiliate Network management system should allow you to identify these scammers – by allowing you to track number of visitors, websites used by Affiliate Network to refer visitors – and then ban if you feel that certain Affiliate Network hurts your reputation.

6) Be in contact with your Affiliate Networks – always stay in touch with them:

Money is the main factor for which your Affiliate Networks are working for you, but it isn\’t the only factor which helps you to retain your Affiliate Networks. More or less all the Affiliate Network programs offered by different product sellers are almost the same, so you can have an advantage if you do something different than what others do, you can do this by being in contact with your Affiliate Networks try to understand their problem and help them whenever they need your support and get their suggestions to improve your product. Always help your Affiliate Networks by contacting them personally, asking if they need some help. This way they will reward you with a lot of sales!

7) Keep track the refund rates of each certain Affiliate Network:

When your customer is not happy with your product they request you to refund the money and you have to do this to maintain good reputation. There are basically two reasons for which your customers will ask you to refund: first is when the product is not really worth the other reason is they might be given some wrong information about the product by your Affiliate Networks and when they didn\’t find that feature in your product they will request you to refund. So, your system should be able to track down those Affiliate Networks and ban them if they bring too many sales that ends up as a refund request – in order to protect your product and online reputation.

Track all websites that bring you visitors and sales via Affiliate Network links:

Tracing down the source from where visitors arrive. Your Affiliate Network management system should be able to trace out from where your customers are coming from i.e., the source which directs them to find the sales page and buy your product. After pinpointing it you have to focus advertising there to boost your sales. Such tracking capabilities allow you to identify the most profitable \’traffic sources\’ and concentrate on them (if it\’s an Affiliate Network – offer additional help, etc.). This way you can easily make your profits soar!

9) Flexible Affiliate Network training capabilities:

You should provide training to your Affiliate Networks about your product so that they can understand what they are selling, its advantages and disadvantages. This will help them greatly to convince their visitors to make them buy your product. Provide all possible promotional materials – banners, pre-written articles, e-mail letters and other content for your Affiliate Networks. Your Affiliate Network management system should allow you to place and manage all promotional tools and thus enable your Affiliate Networks to access them easily whenever they need to.

10) Track all keywords that bring you visitors and sales and manage Affiliate Networks effectively:

Your Affiliate Network management system should be able to find out the keywords used by the visitors to find your product on search engines like Google, yahoo or other search engines. This report can be used to stress these words more in other search engines by using the Meta tags and using ad services of Google, yahoo or other ad service providers. You should be able to track all keywords that people use to find your product via pay per click campaigns such as Google Adwords or Y! Search marketing or regular search engines. Once you find keywords that bring sales, you can easily concentrate on them, bid higher to get even more traffic and sales.

Dear Affiliate Network,

I have bad news for you: You are probably losing money and you didn\’t pay attention to it! Let me explain…

When you joined Affiliate Network programs you probably considered the following factors:

- The commission

- The conversion rate

The profit formula looks like a child play: Commission x Conversion Rate = Your Profit

In fact there are three big pitfalls here and if you don\’t manage them properly, your profit is at risk. Let consider them:

- Price: A high price means a higher Affiliate Network commission for every sale but it may result also in a lower conversion rate… If the product is too expensive, nobody will buy. You shouldn\’t be blinded by the promise of a very high commission. You should keep in mind that the best price is not the one that gives you the highest commission but the one that makes the highest profit. An optimized pricing that makes satisfied customers and satisfied Affiliate Networks is what you should look for.

- Refund Rate: Refunds can kill your marketing efforts! What are worth the sales you see in your account if customers request their money back? A lot of sales mean nothing unless you keep the money!
This is the whole responsibility of the merchant to keep refunds as low as possible. A site that sells well is good. A site that also keeps refunds very low is much better! There is only one way to keep refunds very low: To deliver very high quality services meeting customers\’ expectations or going beyond what they could expect!

- Product Quality: Quality is king! Quality makes superior conversion rates! Quality enables higher prices and better commissions! Quality keeps refunds as low as possible! In a word: Quality should be your compass. Don\’t associate your business with low quality products or services. On the top of your list, promote only the very best. It will also keep your profit on top.

How much money are you losing today?

The money you earn and lose is significantly determined by the quality of the Affiliate Network program you have selected as your top pick.

The question is: How do you measure what is more qualitative and what is less?

There is an objective criterion to use for answering this question and for optimizing your profit: The refund rate of your top Affiliate Network program!

A high refund rate express clearly that lots of customers are not satisfied with what they get and that Affiliate Networks lose money on their sales. On the contrary, a low refund rates indicates a high level of satisfaction among customers and safe earning for Affiliate Networks.

If you get many refunds with your top Affiliate Network program, you should understand that the quality of this program isn\’t sufficient for keeping these customers satisfied and it doesn\’t do the necessary job for securing your profit… You are losing money!

What are good, medium and poor refund rates?

Refunds can\’t be totally avoided. There will always be customers that are not satisfied even for the most qualitative product or service. So, expecting a zero refund rate on the long run is not realistic. You should wish a refund rate as low as possible in your industry. It\’s important to consider that there can be significant variations from one industry to another but as a rule of thumb you can use the following scale:

2% or less: Excellent

3% – 5%: Good

6% – 10%: Medium

11% – 15%: Poor

16% – 20%: Very Poor

21% or higher: Run away!

With a 5% or less refund rate you can be happy. Your Affiliate Network program is reliable and your profit is secured. With a 6%-10% refund rate, you should monitor closely your merchant performance to ensure it doesn\’t get worst. It would be advised to scan the market for a better alternative if you can find one. With an 11%-20% (or higher) refund rate you should be very concerned with your profit. Whatever your industry is, you are bleeding and there is probably a better Affiliate Network program to promote.

What is the refund rate of your top Affiliate Network program?

There are two ways to find the refund rate of an Affiliate Network program:

1) Look at the stats supplied by your Affiliate Network program

Do your math as following: Refunds / Sales = Refund Rate

Let say you make 1000 sales per month, you get a $23.50 commission per sale and about 160 customers request their money back every month. Your refund rate is 160 / 1000 = 16%. In that case it means that you should have earned $23,500 for your sales but you will get only $19,740 because of the refunds. You lost here 16% of your profit or $3,760!

You can ask yourself: Is it only I or all Affiliate Networks for this program get similar numbers? If you use Clickbank to promote Affiliate Network programs, you can get the big picture about the whole community of Affiliate Networks that promote an Affiliate Network program.

2) Using Clickbank payout stats to calculate the average refund rate of an Affiliate Network program

In its marketplace, Clickbank publishes payout stats for Affiliate Network programs. The $Earned/Sale factor gives us exactly what we need to calculate the average refund rate of a program.

The $Earned/Sale is the average net amount earned per Affiliate Network per referred sale. This number is mainly impacted by refunds and it reveals the real commission earned by Affiliate Networks. With this number, you can have an inner look at the real performance of Affiliate Networks programs.

The average refund rate of an Affiliate Network program is:
(Commission – $Earned)/Commission = Average Refund Rate

What is the refund rate of popular Affiliate Network programs at Clickbank?

As an example, we have looked at three Affiliate Network programs selling paid surveys databases. We have found their refund rates very high! You will be surprised at discovering how much money Affiliate Networks can lose when promoting these programs:

- SurveyScout: 16.2% refund rate!

- Survey Platinum: 20.9% refund rate!

- My Consumer Survey: 35.2% refund rate!

To get into the details, on November 29th 2005 figures were as following:

SurveyScout

Affiliate Network Commission: $23.50

Average $Earned/Sale: $19.69

Refund Rate: (23.50 – 19.69) / 23.50 = 16.2%

Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,969 because 16 customers out of 100 have requested their money back!

Survey Platinum

Affiliate Network Commission: $23.50

Average $Earned/Sale: $18.58

Refund Rate: (23.50 – 18.58) / 23.50 = 20.9%

Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $2,350. In fact you will get only $1,858 because 21 customers out of 100 have requested their money back!

My Consumer Survey

Affiliate Network Commission: $40.84

Average $Earned/Sale: $26.43

Refund Rate: (40.84 – 26.43) / 40.84 = 35.2%

Example: For 100 referred sales you should earn $4,084. In fact you will get only $2,643 because 35 customers out of 100 have requested their money back!

Remark: My Consumer Survey has a poorly designed site and a high price for buyers. We estimate its conversion rate to be significantly lower than other paid surveys programs. Despite its high commission, Affiliate Networks will lose the most money with this program.

We learn three lessons about these paid surveys Affiliate Network programs:

- A lot of customers are dissatisfied.

- Affiliate Networks lose big money.

- The quality of these programs is very questionable.

What should you do to stop the bleeding?

You have no influence on the quality of the Affiliate Network programs you promote. Your only real influence is on the quality of your recommendation!

Giving your top recommendation to a very professional Affiliate Network program that delivers the utmost quality services to customers will keep your profit as high and as safe as possible.

How to identify quality in Affiliate Network programs?

Defining quality is a difficult job. In general, people can\’t define clearly what quality is but they recognize it when they see it. So what should you look at in Affiliate Network programs?

The most qualitative Affiliate Network programs find the right balance between the value they offer to customers and the value they generate to Affiliate Networks:

1. Value to customers – It includes:

- Rich content

- Good looking website

- State-of-the-art organization

- Friendly functionality

- Affordable Price for most visitors

- Detailed documentation

- Bonuses strengthening the main offer

- Timely Customer Support

2. Value to Affiliate Networks – It includes:

- High conversion rate

- High commission

- Low refund rate

- Commission paid on time

- Good Affiliate Network support

Within this article, you will discover and learn 7 proven tactics in Affiliate Network marketing business in order to ensure that you will stay in the Affiliate Network marketing business and outstanding among other Affiliate Networks.

1. Conduct the fixed Affiliate Network marketing business plan. There is no doubt that planning is the first critical factor for all business in the world. It will save your time and money. The undo and redo tasks will be minimized. Also, you will have more time to grow your Affiliate Network business when you have your own fixed Affiliate Network marketing plan. Surprisingly, I have found that several Affiliate Network marketing entrepreneurs have their own fixed Affiliate Network marketing business plan. This business plan is a must for all Affiliate Network marketing entrepreneurs who are looking for how to go step forward to their competitors and grow their business. It is an absolutely great Affiliate Network marketing ideas to come up with the fixed daily business plan. The great Affiliate Network marketing tips for this tactic is to start planning monthly, weekly and daily for your Affiliate Network business.

2. Come up with aggressive Affiliate Network marketing ideas. There are many Affiliate Network marketing ideas, techniques or strategies to earn more Affiliate Network commission on the internet. The aggressive Affiliate Network marketing ideas is one of the most effective ways to gain more sales and build highly profitable Affiliate Network marketing business. The real key to your success in this proven tactics in Affiliate Network marketing is to keep advertising your Affiliate Network products consistency with several of marketing techniques. My experiences show that you will reach a wider range of customers and earn more Affiliate Network sales with this proven tactics. For example, you can keep advertising your Affiliate Network products through email marketing. The aggressive idea is to keep sending quality emails (i.e. follow-up message or broadcast emails) to your subscribers to advertise your Affiliate Network products.

3. Combine your Affiliate Network marketing ideas. This proven tactic is very powerful in the Affiliate Network marketing particularly for building highly profitable home based Affiliate Network business in long term. All you have to do for the proven tactics in your Affiliate Network marketing business is to think. Creativity mindset is one of the key successes of this tactics. For example, you can apply email marketing with the article marketing by sending a high quality and fully articles to your subscribers. With those fully articles, you can lead readers to your website or reprint your articles on their websites.

4. Automate your Affiliate Network marketing business with tools. With the daily business tasks in Affiliate Network marketing, you will have no time to think and grow your Affiliate Network business. My highest recommendation is to find an automated software or tool to help you to deliver automatically services or products. Obviously, for example, the auto-responder software is a must for all Affiliate Networks to deliver their email, newsletter or promotion information to their subscribers. With this auto-responder software, you can send and reply email automatically to your subscribers or even customers. I am sure that with those kinds of automated software, you will release yourself from daily business as usual task and will have more time to grow your Affiliate Network marketing business.

5. Protect your Affiliate Network commission and business. There are many hackers and crackers on the internet. It is an absolutely great Affiliate Network marketing ideas to protect your Affiliate Network commission and business with software. With that software, you will ensure that your Affiliate Network commission will not be stolen by third parties on the internet. There are many link protections, prevention and convert software for your Affiliate Network links on the internet. Another example of protecting your home based Affiliate Network business is to backup your important information and list. This is a must for Affiliate Networks to ensure that those Affiliate Network marketing business will not be lose in any situations.

6. Offer great incentives and bonuses. There are no doubt that if there are two Affiliate Network marketing entrepreneurs who are promoting the same Affiliate Network products in the same industry, the winner is a person who offers better incentives and bonuses to potential customers. The examples of great incentives and bonuses could be: a package of software, a set of special reports, superb additional services and great books. The great Affiliate Network marketing ideas to find the bonuses are: to find resell products and to conduct special reports.

7. Spy on your competitors. Keeping your eyes on your competitors is the powerful and proven tactic in Affiliate Network marketing business. You can start spying your competitors by subscribing their newsletter or buying their products, if they have. Other great examples are: to spy their keywords and history of changing websites. There are many spy keyword tools or tracking website software on the internet to spy on your competitors. Personally, I believe that this tactics has been proven and it is a great alternative approach in Affiliate Network marketing business.

Final thoughts, it is obvious that you can be apart from your competitors with those above 7 proven tactics in Affiliate Network marketing. Importantly, the first key of your success is to come up with the fixed Affiliate Network marketing business plan. Then, all you have to do is to take those tactics into your Affiliate Network marketing promotion plan now. You will see great results in the long run. And you will success in the Affiliate Network marketing business.

Many Affiliate Networks get frustrated after joining, I mean, signing up for an Affiliate Network programme. The issue is, they get discouraged because after spending a lot of money on advertising, they get little or no result. I have personally suffered this, and am now in the best position to guide you in your Affiliate Network stride to build extra income from the internet, through promoting Affiliate Network products or Affiliate Network online business opportunities, or both. It is one thing to join an online business, other thing to know the method of taking your products and services, to your target audience.

Am sharing with you, free of charge, proven and attested methods, of advertising your Affiliate Network program, that is any online business that you have joined. We have two types of Affiliate Network program, we have the first tier and the second tier Affiliate Network program. In the former you are going to advertise the companies Affiliate Network products in which you have signed up as an Affiliate Network or an associate partner. In the later, that is second tier, in addition to your effort you recruit other Affiliate Networks under you, called down-lines, you earn certain amount of money as commission, from sales that your down-lines, makes. This can easily, duplicate, the amount of money, that you make online. I share now with you the method of advertisement you can use for your e-business.

Firstly, and the most effective method of advertising Affiliate Network program online, is what is known as article marketing. Article marketing involves writing good contents and submitting them to free article submission websites. This method is free method of reaching your target audience in any Affiliate Network program that you have joined. What is needed is to write good quality original content and then submit them to major article directories, like; EzineArticles, GoArticle, ArticleDashboard, Searchwarp, etc. The list is numerous, you can make use of Google search engine to get more article sites. What you need to do is to register for them, start writing and posting as money articles as possible to them. When you learn and make research on how to write quality contents about your products or or online business opportunity, your article will appear in the Google search engine and others free of charge. In this way, you can get people to buy, the products you promote, and others to join your program, as a sub Affiliate Network or your down-line. You need to do your key word research very well. Get your Affiliate Network link embedded into any content you are submitting, that is publishing in the article submission sites. In the way, you will make money working from home, on an Affiliate Network programme. Don\’t be scared, experience will produce the best result, I started just like you, now I have my contents listed in Google search engines, free of charge and I make money on daily basis, from the customized links in my contents.

The second method of advertising your online business, Affiliate Network program and income opportunities is what is referred to as PPC method of advertising. If you are not good in article marketing, you employ companies to do it for you, that is why this comes in. PPC means pay per click action. The most effective ppc advertising, is that ran by the Google company, referred to as Google AdWords. It involves writing short promotional ads about your Affiliate Network program, products and services, and activating it in the system. You need the knowledge of key words to do well in the program. You pay when people search for you keywords in the search engines and click on your ads. That is why it is referred to as PPC advertising. To register for the program, go to Google , click on advertising program, you have an account and off you go. You can start with a minimum of 10$, paid unto your account, your ads can start running, immediately. You set your bid per click and per day. this depends on the competition available on certain keywords. Certain keywords, bids higher than the other, this is due to huge competitions, amuong Affiliate Networks and various companies. There are some keywords or phrase that may go as low as 0. 1, 0. 01, per click, as the case may be.

The third method of advertising you Affiliate Network products or Affiliate Network program opportunities that I will share with you is what is referred to as social network marketing. Am sure you know what it means to socialize. Its all about friendship making sites. You make friends on such social networks, and you introduce your products and business opportunities to them. Popular social networks includes;facebook, yuwie, twitter, etc. You can make a huge amount of money, working from home by taking advantage of social networking, to advertise your Affiliate Network products and opportunities.

Fortly, is what is known as bum marketing. In this method of advertising, you use the method of reviews of products, Affiliate Network program, your online business websites, etc, you submit them to free article submission sites. I have discussed about using articles, to promote your Affiliate Network products and opportunities earlier on. you will have to include your unique Affiliate Network links into the reviews to make money from them. It shoul be noted that any site you are reviewing, you should have registered for them, in that way you can drive visitors to your Affiliate Network site through your reviews. It should also be noted that most free article submission sites don\’t accept including your url links into the content of your writings or reviews, however, you can include them in the space provided for the authors biography, that is your own space to advertise yourselve, your sites, and Affiliate Network links. This will provide a baclink to which ever site is of interest to you. You have to write original contents and reviews, for your article to be accepted.

The fifth method is what is known as email marketing. It is also an effective method of selling your Affiliate Network products for companies to earn commissions, as well as promote your business opportunities to make down-lines, inorder to duplicate your commission cheques. You will need an email list to mail to. It could be those of your friends, an email newsletter on you website in which people subscribe to for information about a certain products, services, or business opportunities. Email list can serve as a constant source of contact between you and your prospective buyers and sub-Affiliate Networks or your down-lines.

The sixth method to use in promoting your Affiliate Network products and online business opportunities is referred to as offline marketing. Here you reach people offline or personal contact and you refer them to your Affiliate Network page.

The last method I will share with you, is known as video advertising. You share videos with people about your products and services. You can produce the videos yourself or you use other peoples shared videos and include your Affiliate Network links. This will provide a back link to your website or Affiliate Network links. When people watch the videos and they see your advertisement, if they are interested, they will click on it, they will be navigated to your website or Affiliate Network link. You can start by going to YouTube. The site is owned and managed by Google company, the owner of Google , the worlds most popular search engines.

The difference between the ordinary and the extraordinary, is the little extra. Dont be discouraged, practice, will surely lead you to perfection. To succeed, possibilitize yourself, think success, talk success, and take success. If you are determined and put these methods to work, especially the article marketing, which is free method of advertising for Affiliate Network products and online business opportunities, in few months, you will rank high in the result pages of major search engines, especially Google . It is only then that your struggle to gain financial in dependence, will come true. Don\’t die in poverty, act today.

What is an Affiliate Network program? Everyone who surfs the web has come across Affiliate Network programs. You may have seen a banner on a website that says, \”click here\”, and once you do, you get access to whatever\’s being promoted. Or you could click on a link in an email you\’ve received. You\’re using someone\’s Affiliate Network program.

Basically, the company that sells the product sets up an automated way for people to be paid a set amount to help them promote their products or services. The links send you to the company\’s website where you can buy the product. The owner of the originating website or email gets a fee for taking you there.

The bookstore Amazon was the first company to heavily promote Affiliate Network marketing on the internet. Although this type of marketing is ideal for businesses that only operate online, it\’s also become popular with businesses that have both an online and bricks and mortar presence.

Affiliate Network programs are an ideal way to make your web site profitable. With the huge range of Affiliate Network programs now available, there\’s almost bound to be something to suit you and your website.

How it works

Perhaps you\’ve created a website about the city where you live. People find your website while searching for information about your city. Once they\’ve read your pages they check out your recommendations. They might click a link to book a flight there. You get paid a commission. Then they clink your link that points them to somewhere they can book a hotel room. Another commission for you. Then they might want to buy a guide-book or street map. Yet another commission.

Or perhaps you have a website connected with your hobby. Maybe you want to share your enthusiasm about the crafts you do. Your website could point people towards suppliers, books on the subject, magazine subscriptions…the list is endless. And all the time you\’re earning your commission.

The commission is paid in different ways according to the company you\’re Affiliate Networkd to. You can be paid per impression, per click, per lead or per sale. The stronger the likelihood of a sale, the higher your commission will be.

The advantages for you

There\’s no need for you to develop the products – it\’s already been done. All you need to do is to pick the best out of those available. You don\’t need to spend money on making or storing the product. Sending people to your Affiliate Network merchants means you don\’t need to take or process a single order, or worry about processing payments. You don\’t have to handle or mail the product – your merchants do that. You don\’t have to offer customer support. Affiliate Network programs are usually free to join. You can run your Affiliate Network business part time for a little extra cash while making minimal effort.

Choosing your Affiliate Networks

It\’s worth spending some time making sure that you choose the right companies to Affiliate Network with. Different companies have different requirements. Some require you to have a minimum number of visitors to your website, while others require you to have your own domain name.

The best way to choose an affliate program that will suit you is according to the type of people who visit your website. If your website is about guitars, you\’re unlikely to have much success with affiliating with a company that sells gardening products. The first thing you need to do is know your target audience.

You also might consider whether you want to join every single affliate program that comes your way. A lot of people find that they make the most money from using only a small number of programs. Also, concentrating your advertisements may allow you to be paid faster.

Sometimes, it can be hard to choose between two similar companies. What works well for someone else may not be the best choice for you. It\’s not just about how much money you can make -you\’ll want to feel confident in your recommendations.

You can maximize your income by thinking beyond the obvious. If your website is aimed at parents, obviously you might think of affiliating to a toy company. But what about books, clothes, videos, DVDs, child oriented software…

If you\’re thinking about affiliating with two similar websites, you might want to choose the one that easiest to use or offers the greater benefit to a visitor, even if it pays less in commissions. You\’ll do best with programs that represent a subject you\’re personally interested in. Your own interest in the subject will entice others.

To join an Affiliate Network program, you simply go to the site and complete their online application form. Some programs approve you instantly, while others check out your application before it is approved. Once it\’s approved, you\’re given some HTML code that you can cut and paste onto your web page.

How do I make my money?

Before joining any program, you should probably be aware of the different payment programs available.

Pay Per Impression

Here you are paid according to the number of times the advertiser\’s banner is displayed on your site. The amount paid is usually small, but it is easy to earn as everytime a visitor loads the page, you earn. The more vistors your site attracts, the more you earn.

Pay Per Click

With this method you\’re only paid when visitors click the advertiser\’s banner on your site. It generally pays higher than the pay per impression program. You\’ll get better results if your banners are carefully selected to suit your target audience.

Pay Per Sale or Lead

You only earn if your visitors click through the banner and buy the product or service.

Often, to avoid wasting resources in issuing checks for very small amounts, advertisers will accrue the amount owed to you until it reaches a certain amount before they pay you.

How do they keep track of referrals?

Every Affiliate Network banner or link that a visitor clicks on has some type of coding added to the URL – this differentiates it from other Affiliate Networks\’ links. The most common means of tracking Affiliate Network links is by \”cookies\” Cookies are tiny files stored on your computer by a web browser when you click on an advertising link.

Cookies are generated to track visitors to websites. This is how they can \”remember\” what you bought when you visit there again. For an Affiliate Network company, the cookie records information on which Affiliate Network referred the visitor to the company, and when.
As some computer users block or delete cookies, there are other methods used to track referrals. For example, CGI-based scripts related to the individuals Affiliate Network code attached to the URL links and database matching algorithms are used.
Second tier programs

A two tier program allows you as an Affiliate Network to sign up other Affiliate Networks under you. You earn a smaller commission on the referrals or sales that arise from their advertising efforts as well as your own.

This costs you far less time and money for each sale if some of them aren\’t yours. In effect, you have your own sales force and pay a commission to your sub-Affiliate Networks. Except that the commission comes out of the Affiliate Network company\’s profits rather than yours.

The Affiliate Network company benefits by a possible exponential growth of its sales force for no more effort on its part – you\’re providing that. It\’s not hard to recruit people under you in two tier programs.

A second level can be a great advantage to you as an Affiliate Network. Even if you only spread the word amongst friends and family, you never know when someone who signs up under you will really take off. They could earn you a lot by their own efforts in spreading the word about a program. You might not get rich, but you\’ll get some welcome extra income.

A multi tier Affiliate Network program builds on the concept of a two-tier program.
Not only can you earn from sub-Affiliate Networks, but you can also earn from their sub-Affiliate Networks, and perhaps their sub-Affiliate Networks. With a two tier program, you have an incentive to sign up sub-Affiliate Networks. A multi-tier program gives you the incentive to help your sub Affiliate Networks sign up others.

Is it for me?

If you have a website then there\’s guaranteed to be an Affiliate Network program to suit your needs and audience. For minimal effort you can make your website earn money, even while you\’re happily sleeping. Perhaps it won\’t make you a fortune overnight. And it\’s true that no-one hands you money for doing nothing. But with some careful thought and planning, choosing an Affiliate Network program that fits in with YOUR website and sells products that YOU are confident in is a straightforward way of increasing YOUR income. And it costs you nothing.