Affiliate marketing is one of
best ways to spend your marketing dollars. It is called pay-for-performance marketing. You as an online store owner or service provider only pay affiliates that bring traffic and customer sales to your site.How An Affiliate Network Works?
Affiliate networking consists of an affiliate, an advertiser, and back-office software or service to manage program.
- Affiliate Program or Network. The affiliate network or software provides necessary affiliate tools and services to manage affiliate relationship and even provide back-office functions such as fraud control, reporting, and issuing checks to affiliates. Most affiliate management programs also integrate with most shopping cart software. Most affiliate programs provide multiple pay-for-performance options to include pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead, and pay-for-click.
- The Affiliate. Affiliates are basically independent contractors providing marketing services to your business. The affiliate provides links from his site to your site. This link could be a text link or banner ad highlighting benefits of your product or service. The affiliate program usually generates an unique link for each affiliate. The unique link is used to track visitors, and it sets a cookie to follow visitor until a sale is made or agreed-upon performance (sales, lead, click) occurs as a result of affiliate link.
- The Advertiser. The advertiser can be any size business. The advertiser either buys and manages his own affiliate program, joins an affiliate network, or outsources entire affiliate management process. There are various degrees of up-front costs as well as monthly costs. Most internet-savy businesses have an affiliate program because it is best Return-On-Investment (ROI) for most business models.
Challenges of Using An Affiliate Network.
There can be many challenges to an affiliate marketing program. Many of these challenges can be mitigated by following best business practices and using appropriate affiliate management tools. This can include an affiliate network, affiliate software program, or using an outsourcing partner to manage your program. Challenges include: drawing up contract between advertiser and affiliate, application form, links and banners, affiliate training, affiliate tracking and fraud control, affiliate newsletter, paying affiliates, affiliate recruiting, and tech support.
