Affiliate Revenue Information


Making Money with Affiliate Programs - Part II


In this holiday season online shopping is hotter than ever! According to US Commerce Department online sales continue to grow with a robust 25-27 percent this year over 1992. Online holiday shopping at a rate of 10 percent is also considerably outpacing the 5.7 percent growth of overall retail sales. Goldman Sachs predicts 23 percent of all gift-buying this holiday season will take place online!

So, if you don't have a product of your own to sell online, how can you profit from this exciting trend?

One of the finest ways of making money online is to promote other people's products or services by becoming their affiliates. Affiliate is a term used for a website that drives traffic to another website in exchange for a predetermined commission.

Thanks to the success of several affiliate programs in the early days of online business, most merchant websites, today, use some kind of affiliate programs to promote their sites and generate sales.

Considering the sheer numbers of affiliate programs available on the Internet, you may feel overwhelmed. However, if you set some basic criteria, it would be lot easier to find a good program that suits your need.

Free sign up

The affiliate program that you are planning to join must be absolutely free. There are way too many good programs available for free, why should you pay for one? Moreover, the programs that require payments to join are mostly multi Level Marketing (MLM) programs. Although, there may be manygood MLM programs existing on the Internet, I don't think it's a viable option for an average person.

Good commission

You deserve handsome compensation for all your hard work! No matter, how you look into it, in most of the cases,promoting a product or service is not an easy job. Since you are doing the uphill struggle of bringing the client to the merchant's door, your commission should be real good one. What is an acceptable commission anyway? If you are promoting an information product, don't go for less than 50 percent. For more tangible products and services your bare minimum commission should be 15 percent of the sale. If you are promoting monthly subscription, choose a program that pays a portion of subscription fee as recurring commission to you as long as the client referred by you stays subscribed.

Tow-tier affiliate program

An affiliate program which pays certain percent as a commission from the sale for bringing in a client and another if that client brings in other clients. Two-tier affiliate programs are more preferable since once a client base is built, it becomes a great source of residual income.

Quality affiliate tracking system

The merchant should have a very good and well-organized affiliate sales tracking management software system. You have to be absolutely comfortable with the statistics generated by the affiliate program. The program should show such important aspects as repurchase, if any, by the client referred by you, your second tier affiliates, activities by your second tier clients, etc.If you do not feel comfortable with the tracking system provided by a merchant, better stick to the merchants, who use third party affiliate managing system. At least, you will know that a dishonest merchant won't be able to defraud you.

Efficient customer support

You should feel satisfied with the service and support you get from your affiliate program owner. A good program highlyvalues its affiliates and gives priority to its customer support system. As the clients that you are sending to themerchant are primarily your site's visitors, you should be extremely picky about the quality of customer service the program renders. After all, your own site's reputation is also at stake here!

Promotional materials

If you are planning to promote an affiliate program, you will need more materials then mere banners. Unfortunately, even many high-end affiliate programs do not carry enough promotional materials to satisfy the need of the affiliates.Promotional material should include: contents to build mini-sites, various ad articles, different kind of text links, product brochures or presentation, etc.

Commission payment policy

The affiliate program should have a sort of minimum payment policy, where you can receive commissions if even you have made just one or two sales. A reasonable amount is US $25. Less than that is not viable due to processing costs. Commission should be paid each month. If you are located outside of US, see if the merchant makes payment through Paypal or other similar services or not. For most of the countries checks issued in other countries are not a good option.

If an affiliate program meets all these above mentioned criteria, you can consider joining in this program. However, to get best result from your efforts, before signing up, you should also consider the following rules:

You have to like the product you are promotingAny salesman will confirm you that this is one of the fundamental rules of selling. If you are selling a product or service you must have confidence in it. If you like the product and will use it yourself gladly, you found a product to promote! Don't waste your time with a product that is not

up to your taste!

Promote a product or service consistent to your website'ssubject matter If your site is all about soccer, you will be better off with products and service related to soccer. If this same site promotes,for example: pesticides, no matter how hard you try your success will be very limited! Before joining in any affiliate program first you should identify who your visitors are, what do they like and which products they will probably buy online. Once you know your niche marketit's lot easier to find products or services for it.

Many webmasters think that in order to make money through affiliate programs, all you have to do is to come up with a site and fill up the site with affiliate links. Sooner all later people will click on them. Unfortunately this does not work! Making money through affiliate programs is also a business and like any business you have to have a proper business plan. Only a well prepared businessplan followed by its meticulous implementation can bring success to your affiliate endeavor.

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he has wide experience in Business Consulting, International Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace with solutions to start and run online business.You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com, http://ezine.rusbiz.com, http://www.rusbiz.com


MORE RESOURCES:

Disney's Earnings Beat; CEO Bob Iger Talks Piracy, Parks
CNBC.com
Increased guest spending and attendance at the parks, and higher advertising rates and affiliate revenue at the media networks drove the earnings upside. The revenue fell short of analyst expectations (Disney doesn't provide guidance) – at $10.779 ...

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Globe and Mail

Disney derring-do
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Affiliate revenue will kick up due to Comcast and other deals that will be negotiated,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said yesterday on a conference call with analysts to discuss first-quarter results. Iger noted the Mouse House doesn't yet have deals with ...
The Walt Disney Company Reports First Quarter EarningsBusiness Wire (press release)
Disney Posts 7% Broadcast Revenue DropTV News Check
Walt Disney's CEO Discusses Q1 2012 Results - Earnings Call TranscriptSeeking Alpha
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Skimlinks is the real story behind Pinterest's success
TechCrunch
Anyone making a purchase from that click through sends affiliate revenue, via Skimlinks, back to Pinterest. Kerching, everyone benefits. This is very old news in the word of affiliate schemes. What is getting some hot under the collar is that Pinterest ...

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Telegraph.co.uk

Cable Nets, Fox Lead News Corp.'s Q2 Earnings Jump
Multichannel News
Affiliate revenue rose 9% at the domestic cable channels. Operating income for the television unit, which includes Fox Broadcasting, rose 25% to $189 million from $151 million. The company said the growth was the result of increased broadcastd network ...
News Corporation Reports Second Quarter Net Income of $1.06 BillionMarketWatch (press release)

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Fox Studio, TV Divisions Boost News Corp. Q2 Profits Despite Hacking Investigation
Reuters
A little bit of everything contributed to the higher figures, from a nine percent growth in affiliate revenue to a six percent increase in advertising revenue. FX in particular continued to stand out as a top performer, while the NBA lockout both ...

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AMD, Nike, Disney, Panera Bread Among Stocks Driving Big News Feb. 7th
Wall St. Cheat Sheet
The increase at ESPN was driven by higher affiliate revenue reflecting contractual rate increases and a reduction in revenue deferrals related to annual program commitments. During the quarter, ESPN deferred $190M of revenue compared to $266M in the ...

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Fortune

It's time for Disney to cut ABC loose
Fortune
Disney (DIS) blamed the poor showing at ABC on lower affiliate revenue following the end of Oprah Winfrey's popular talk show and a decrease in political ad spending, as it was not an election year. While both may explain a decrease in revenue, ...

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Fox on Top
Multichannel News
SNL Kagan calculates FNC's affiliate revenue at $985.3 million in 2012, based on 82 cents per sub each month. “The network is getting strong monthly subscriber fee increases, up from 58 cents in 2009,” according to Baine, who projects average license ...

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Racked National (blog)

20% Off J.Crew Knits and Tees; Shop and Donate at Mulu
Racked National (blog)
On Mulu, when something is purchased directly off the site, all affiliate revenue is split with the user who posted the item. Then, that user has the option to donate the money to one of 38 different charities. If you haven't signed up yet, ...



Viacom's CEO Discusses Q1 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Seeking Alpha
We expect our affiliate revenue to grow on an annualized basis in the high-single to low-double digit for the foreseeable future. As we unlock value for our content across platform, we're unlocking growth potential across global markets as well, ...

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