Building Traffic through Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are a great mechanism for increasing traffic and sales. Growing your link popularity and brand awareness are also resulting benefits. Affiliate marketing is just like its offline referral business counterpart; referring affiliates are paid either a flat fee or percentage commission for sending customers to the e-tailer.

Before you get started, weigh up the considerations with each type of program:

Click Through Programs
This method of referral requires you to pay an affiliate for every click on your advertisement made by a visitor at their website. Google AdSense provides this service on a large scale, eliminating the need for you to approach advertisers directly. However, costs can escalate very quickly and you don’t get the benefits of a highly targeted audience when using advertising networks.

If you choose to locate affiliates yourself, you can find them through search engines or seek potential candidates at a Banner Auction website. Banner auctions list websites that are looking to place advertisements on their web page/s. You can either bid for or just buy out the Ad Space instantaneously.

At a Banner Auction, you can find publishers (websites offering Ad Space) who are looking to sell on a pay per click basis or pay per time. Pay per time means you have your advertisement displayed on their website for a set period of time for a once off payment. This saves the hassle of providing reports as with commission and click through based programs.

Flat-Fee Referral Programs
You and the affiliate agree on a flat fee to be incurred upon a customer being referred to your site and performing a specific action. This might include subscribing to your newsletters, making a purchase, signing up to your e-club, filling out a quote or some other action.

This method is beneficial for driving traffic, however requires thorough reporting. Once again, you would need to find and contact publishers directly or use an advertising network to locate websites to accept your advertisement on this basis.

Advertising networks refer to this as a "pay per action" advertising method. Many publishers selling ad spots direct aren’t enthusiastic about accepting this form of advertising as their income depends too much on the quality of your advertisement.

Commission Based Programs
These are the most commonly known. You would normally pay affiliates a percentage of the profit which you derive from a sale made as a result of a customer having been referred to you by the affiliate. You may also provide a two-tier commission structure by offering to pay further commission for referrals from new sites referred by them.

Commission based affiliate programs can be very rewarding but take a lot of time and effort. Gone are the days where obtaining as many affiliates as possible was the goal. When you get a quality referrer, reward their efforts by providing prompt detailed reporting and punctual payment.

If you want success, you will need to find quality affiliates who are ambitious and eager to perform. Apart from reporting, it’s a good idea to conduct regular online meetings with your members to provide them with new tools and materials.

Also, help make your links more prominent on your affiliates’ websites by providing icons in a different size and supplying the HTML coding and tag line (which should include your optimized keywords and link to your website). You can also provide participants with a regular newsletter which they can personalize and forward through their mailing list.

Reap the Rewards
Making sure your affiliates stay happy by providing timely and detailed reports, prompt payment and other incentives will keep your members motivated and working hard, ensuring the success of your program. Even if referrals don’t result in direct sales, by operating an affiliate program, you still gain link popularity for search engine ranking, brand awareness and, best of all, traffic.