Benefits of Affiliate Marketing.

There are major benefits of having an affiliate marketing program. Advantages include:

- Pay Only When Affiliate Traffic Generates A Sale. Pay-For-Performance marketing is becoming norm on Internet. This is a lot different from a newspaper ad or direct mail. With traditional advertising you pay most of your marketing costs up-front whether advertisement does well or not. With affiliate marketing, you pay most of your costs only when a sale is made.

- Immediate Feedback and Limited Costs With Under-Performing Marketing Campaigns. With affiliate marketing, you get immediate and specific feedback on your marketing campaigns. If a banner ad or text link does not perform, you can change it quickly. You also do not have to pay much for a poor-performing ad campaign as most of costs are based on performance - no sale, no commission.

- Link Popularity Increase Rankings On Search Engines Resulting In Free Traffic. Many search engines such as Google rank sites by number of quality links that are coming into a web site. If your affiliate program has a hundred or thousands of affiliates, these affiliate links will increase your link popularity on search engines. This will result in your web site being placed higher in search engine results that then generates free traffic for your site.

There are, of course, some interesting things that occur as a result of all of this stuff. For example, consider what I call "cross fertilization effect": Suppose a person goes to yahoo.com and performs a search that leads them to one of my websites that happens carry Google AdSense ads and that visitor then clicks on one of those ads...the net result is that Yahoo natural search provided Google pay per click with some revenue! Aren't these fun times that we're living in?

As these programs continue to proliferate, individual webmaster needs to exercise a little restraint and avoid temptation to go overboard by plastering these ads all over your website and thereby diluting your own primary message/proposition and confusing your hard earned visitor. When properly used, these ads are just ancillary or complementary content that you are providing to enhance information and opportunities that you are providing to your visitor...if something happens to strike a responsive chord with your visitor, you might make a little pay per click money.

If properly used, these propagation programs can result in classical "win-win" situation. However, if you over do it, this can quickly turn into a loss for you (the individual webmaster) and a win for your pay per click partners that are distributing ads. As in many things, moderation is important.

It's a constant sea of change, but good things just keep on getting better! Stay alert, and light on your feet, and opportunities will just keep on coming your way.

The above are just some observations from "the peanut gallery", but I don't think I'm far off mark about where things are heading. With that, I'm off soapbox and wishing you success in whatever you do online!