Affiliate Information and all about Customer referrals
Customer referrals / UK Affiliate internet marketing
Do you want to make money with your website making customer referrals with companies like Dell and B&Q? Well all you have to do is register with a company that provides you with link to put on your site that track sales like TradeDoubler or AffiliateWindow or if you want to generate revenue from google you can join their google adsense program here:
Affiliate Marketing is one of the most cost effective and super efficient ways of advertising. As an affiliate you are using other sites and businesses websites to support your own business, earning revenue off related business. It is free to place advertisments and banners on your site, and free to join the networks. As a merchant it costs the affiliate nothing to advertise your business, so they have nothing to loose really.
There is no hard and fast rule - but really you should be looking to gernerate as much information, content or "copy" as it is known, about a topic that people search for. This way your site may be more likely to show up in top results.
Not everyone is going to make big money in affiliate marketing, only the ones that come up when people search for their subject, and have got the right kind of affiliate marketing and advertising in place. Your adverts need to be relevant and not "in your face" for most people to be interested.
For a more detailed explanation on how affiliate internet marketing in the UK works, read on. Click on a question to scroll down to the answer
What is Affiliate Marketing / Referral Marketing?
Quite simply, Affiliate Marketing is the act of promoting someone else's goods and services at your own expense in order to earn commission from sales made through your efforts.
But to understand how this works, it is important to firstly understand the primary word itself; af-fil-i-ate :
- As a Verb it means : To associate (oneself) as a subordinate, subsidiary, employee, or member. As in "You may Affiliate yourself with a company."
- Whereas the Noun defines : A person, organization, or establishment associated with another as a subordinate, subsidiary, or member. As in "You may become an Affiliate with our company."
Secondly, it is important to understand the groups, or entities, involved in this type of business structure :
- Merchant / Shop : The entity selling goods and services.
- Customer : The entity looking to purchase goods and services.
- Affiliate : The entity (you) advertising the goods or services on behalf of companies.
- Affiliate Group : The entity that manages the administration.
Normally a Merchant or Shop will sell their wares directly to the Customer, but this means that the Merchant must spend a lot of time and money on advertising, trying to attract Customers, which may or may not work. Therefore, it is in the interests of the Merchant to have a lot of other people advertising their products for them, but they don't want to pay the Affiliate simply to advertise because there is still no guarantee that Customers will buy anything. So, instead of up front advertising fees, the Merchant offers the Affiliate a Commission on anything that the Customer buys. Some pay for pay per click campaigns, but this seems to be getting rare.
Therefore, your job as an Affiliate Marketing person is to advertise various products and services on your website in order to generate traffic (click-throughs) to the Merchant's (like Dell) website where they become responsible for getting the Customer to buy things, this is called Conversion, essentially the act of turning a Browser into a paying Customer. The various Merchants have different rates of Conversion and Commission.
The Affiliate Networks manage the relationships and administration between the Merchants and Affiliates. Affiliate Groups gather together lots of Merchants and create Programs which Affiliates can sign up to. You need to apply for an account with an Affiliate Group, almost always free to join, and then you sign up individually for the Merchant Programs that they offer. Some Merchants will accept you automatically whereas others may want to review your website to make sure it is an appropriate place for their brand to be displayed. Not all Merchants choose to use an Affiliate Group and may work directly with Affiliates.
Back To The Top
Do Affiliate Sales Cost More Than Normal?
A common misconception is that when someone purchases something on the internet through an Affiliate link then they pay more for the goods and services, this is not true. I have never come across a Merchant that charges the Customer more for coming to their website via an Affiliate link.
The way it works is that the Merchant sells the product for the same price as normal and then from this amount pays Commission to the Affiliate, the Customer will not normally even know they have helped the Affiliate earn the Commission. The Affiliate Groups make their money from subscriptions paid by the Merchants and sometimes from Commission payments from the sales made by the Affiliates. Each Affiliate Group publishes their Fee and Commission structure on their website.
Back To The Top
How Are Affiliate Sales Tracked?
Affiliate Networks use a variety of methods mostly Tracking or Referral Codes and Cookies.
Referral Codes : This is a unique code that is attached to the end of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) in the link from your website to the Merchant's website. This code will identify you, via your Affiliate Group Account, as being the referring agent who is entitled to Commission for any purchase made by the Customer. For example, if the Merchant's website URL was http://www.leabeven.com/ then the link you would use might look like this http://www.leabeven.com/affilate.asp?id=12555 , where 12555 is your Account Number with that particular Affiliate Group.
The problem with using Referral Codes by themselves is that if the Customer does not buy anything during that visit to the Merchant website but returns later on, via a different route, to purchase something then you will not get credit for the referral. To get around this some Merchants log Customer's IP (Internet Protocol) Addresses with the Referral Code so when the Customer returns later on they know who made the initial referral. But there are still problems with this as some people have a Dynamic IP Address, which means it changes every time they sign on to the internet.
title="Affiliate marketing information"
Cookies : A Cookie is a very small piece of information that a website puts on your computer so that it can remember something about you at a later time. What this means is that you are still credited as the referral agent even if the Customer visits a Merchant website and then goes away, but returns later on by going directly to the Merchant's website and not by clicking through from your website. Most Cookies are set to remain active for a period of time, like 30 days or maybe 90 days, in some extreme cases Cookies are set to remain active for 9,999 days! However, some Merchants use what are called Session Only Cookies, this means that they only remain active for the duration of the Customer's current visit to their site.
Whichever method is used, you must remember that some (few) Merchants are only interested in paying you Commission if an immediate purchase is made, i.e. during the Customer's current visit to their site. On the other hand, most Merchants are happy to pay you Commission for the lifetime of the Customer or lifetime of the cookie (say 99 days), so no matter when they return or how much they buy you will still get Commission on every sale. The details of what each Merchant will pay is usually listed in the Merchant Program on the Affiliate Group's website. These details can often affect which Merchants you chose to take on and display on your website.
Back To The Top
How Do Affiliates Get Paid?
Affiliate Networks manage the funds transferred between Merchants and Affiliates, except where the Merchant manages the Affiliates directly, although these are in the minority. Most Affiliate Networks offer online access to your accounts so you can see, at any time, what Commission you have earned for the month.
Commissions are usually paid out monthly, although some Merchants and Affiliate Groups will pay out weekly or even immediately, nothing is set in stone.
Make sure you understand what information you are looking at in your Affiliate Network Account as sometimes they will display potential sales which may get cancelled and you may not receive Commission on these transactions. Other screens may display a cumulative Commission figure, earned since you started with the Affiliate Group, this is not what you will get paid that month.
Back To The Top
How Do Affiliates Get Started?
Most people used a website, but these can be generated easily and cheaply through free hosting sites that provide templates for you to use, places like Freewebs will get you started. The only thing you need pay for up front is the purchase of your Domain Name which can be purchased through places like Low Cost Names.
It is a very good idea to learn HTML and become proficient in at least the basics. Like anything in life the more you learn the better you will become and this means you can make a better website which may translate into more earnings. A good place to find books about HTML is on Amazon, the one I can personally recommend as being easy to follow and comprehensive is HTML - Black Book.
You should have a theme for your website which you will base your Merchant Links around. In my opinion it is not the best idea to have a generic shopping website for many different types of products as this is very difficult to set up and maintain, the website usually ends up looking simply like a bunch of advertising banners with no point other than the owner trying to make a quick buck. This is a turn off to website Users/Customers. I personally believe that it is better to focus on a central theme that will not only attract people to your site but then allow you to place relevant adverts on your website. This argument is expanded in the section below about the Seducible Moment.
It is also very important to distinguish between your "Draw-card" and your "Revenue Stream". What this means is that having a website that sells a single product and tries to attract Customers on this basis is less interesting to Visitors as it has a single purpose and if you don't want to buy the product you will not visit it. However, if the website offers a lot of free information, allowing multiple reasons to visit it, and then is subtly laced with Affiliate Links, it is more likely to attract repeat traffic which gives you more chances to have Visitors click through a Link and convert them into Customers. The information is the Draw-card, attracting the traffic to the site and the Affiliate Links are the Revenue Stream. You might also have your own product or service on the site if you have them.
Once you have your website design, domain name and have it hosted somewhere you can start to sign up with Affiliate Groups and apply to Merchant Programs. The Affiliate Groups supply you with the HTML and Banner images for your adverts, but be aware that some links are only valid for a short period of time and may go out of date, therefore, it is a good idea to regularly check you site to make sure all the links and images are still working.
More help on getting your website started can be found on this page on Planning A Site that gives you a few pointers in this issue.
Follow this link to find some of the better known Affiliate Programs.
Back To The Top
What Is The Seducible Moment?
In the internet industry there is a tangible point in time referred to as the "Seducible Moment", this is the point at which the website owner (you) can entice the Visitor, or Customer, off the path to their original goal with the lure of something else. The seducible moment can only happen when Visitors have completed at least part of their original quest. It is difficult to lure Visitors away from their original goal until they've reached this (self-defined) point, before which they will simply ignore distractions. The concept of the seducible moment argues against placing ad banners in their traditional place at the top of a page, although this is still a powerful position for advertisements that are exceptionally relevant to the specific page they are sited on. In general, website Visitors seem more willing to be seduced if an advert appears after they've found the information they're most interested in.
To put this in perspective let's review a practical example. Our website Visitor wants to buy a new computer, but is not sure what parts they need and what to order, so they find themselves on a page that details information about a computer. After they have read, or while they are reading, the information they may well be lured off the page by clicking on one of the various Links on the page that will earn the website owner Commission. On page there could be several links that earn money for the website owner, one of them may link to .
Another example. The idea here is that the Visitor has already decided to buy a computer and wants to compare retailers and suppliers. They may find a page that compares PC's like and then offers several Links to the Dell site through which the Visitor may be converted into a Customer. In addition there are other Affiliate Links which the Visitor might choose to click on.
It is important to manage your Visitor, guide them to the pages that you want them to be on and never let them leave your website without clicking on an Affiliate Link. Although it is good practice to mix a few other helpful, non-profit Links in with the Affiliate Links to bolster your free information appeal. It is also good practice to make all external Links open a new browser window so that the Visitor never loses your website.
Back To The Top
What Else Can You Tell Me?
Most Affiliate Links these days operate on a Commission basis, i.e. you will not get paid unless the Customer actually pays for something on the Merchant's website. However, it is still possible to find Links that will "pay per click", that means you get paid for every time someone clicks on the Link from your website. Be warned, the companies operating such schemes have very smart software and can determine if you are just sitting on your own website all day and clicking on the Links to earn money, this is a quick way to get booted out of the scheme and not be allowed to join again. Don't abuse these schemes, if managed properly they can make you a lot of money.
The search engine people at Google run a system called Google AdSense (see on the left near the top), entitled "Ads by Google". The Merchants pay Google to advertise their links, but they only pay when their Link is clicked on, Google in turn pay the website owner a Commission payment for the click. Google maximise their potential for getting clicked on by spreading the Links all over websites in the AdSense format. AdSense is very smart and only displays adverts that are relevant to the content of the page they are on, so you need to be careful what words you put in your website pages where you are using AdSense. The AdSense adverts also rotate, meaning they will be different the next time you visit that page, provided there enough adverts in that category.
Google also run a system called AdWords, this is a very different animal and does not require you to have your own website. This system is where you bid on certain search terms, or Keywords, and when Users search for these Keywords in Google a sponsored advert will appear in the right hand column. If a User clicks on this advert the owner will pay Google for the click, the price depends on many variables but starts around US$0.05. The idea here is to lure Users to your website or, in some cases, directly to the Merchant's website (using your Referral Code) where you hope to convert the User into a Customer and earn more Commission than you just paid Google to get the click through. You can learn more about this here
Back To The Top
There are many resources on the internet to help you learn about Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Groups and Merchants. You can also find places to learn about HTML, website hosting and domain names. There are, of course, many other alternative ways to make money.
I have created a centralised resource for Online Discussion about all of these topic where people, such as yourself, can learn and exchange ideas with other like minded people.
Visit Discussion Forum and see what you can learn. If you like more personal support, give me a call and book me for some consultancy
We are lucky really that there are places online to help us when we have affiliate issues and concerns we want to share - you can join our own forum here and also go to A4U Discussion Forum and build up your own personal community of online friends - you can never join too many!
