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What is an Affiliate Program?
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An affiliate promotes the products and services of online merchants on
its website for a commission. Affiliates choose affiliate programs that
will provide value to visitors given the context of their sites'
offerings. To be an advertiser a merchant must either join a
3rd party tracking company or install software on their own server to
track click-throughs or sales made by the referring web site.
Publishers apply to join the advertiser's program, and upon acceptance,
select and place the advertiser's offers on their Web site making them an
Affiliate of the advertiser. An affiliate program
is a partnership between your site and an online merchant (that is, a
website that sells goods or services). When you join a merchant's program,
you can link directly to its site.
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Should I be running an Affiliate program to help pay for my web site?
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Just because you join an affiliate program does not mean you will make
money. Many web sites have not even earned one penny from the result
of displaying dozens of affiliate banners simply because they choose poorly
on selecting their affiliate programs they join versus the content of
their web site. Let's say your business is coin collecting, sells,
and trading. You would not want to join and display ads for dresses, or
even games, but you may want to join an affiliate program that allows you
to sell books from your web site about coin collecting. On the other
hand, if your web site only receives 100 unique visitors per month, you're
probably wasting your time joining any affiliate programs.
Why? Many programs only pay out once you reach a certain dollar
figure, like a minimum of $50 in commissions due you. If you are
only making 5% of all sales on books, it make take a year or so before you
have accumulated the minimum needed to receive a check.
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Can I trust an Affiliate that is running their own tracking program to
pay me?
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We try using 3rd party affiliate programs our self, like Commission
Junction, BeFree, or Linkshare. Beware of any company running their
own accounting and tracking system. I would like to think most
people are honest, but then........With just these 3 companies listed, you
can select from hundreds of affiliate programs from a central location.
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Affiliate Programs that might be of Interest to you
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Commission Junction - Commission
Junction provides publishers the opportunity to earn more revenue from
their audience on a pay-for-performance basis. Publishers can partner with
hundreds of advertisers and access millions of ads from a single Web-based
interface. Commission Junction is the trusted third party that tracks and
reports on every ad in the network, sends a monthly payment to publishers,
and provides a suite of online tools to help publishers optimize their
performance.
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LinkShare - LinkShare hosts a
password-protected website that offers affiliates a choice of hundreds of
merchant programs. On the site, affiliates can join new programs, get
links to put on their sites, and then see reports about how their links
are performing and how much they have earned.
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