OK Lets get down to the basic of affiliate marketing Please rmember as always the internet is flooded with stories/ claims of "this is how I made a million dollars etc!!" - its a good idea to stay clear of such claims In theory affiliate programs can be very effective You can join a scheme for FREE and get a very healthy commission for your efforts to sell the products - often as high as 50%, although around 25% is probably more common The idea is you send traffic to your "Affiliate URL" and any sales which result will be credited to your account This sounds a very attractive idea - you dont have to worry about producing the product, or dealing with enquiries or worry about after sales problems etc You can just set up your Pay Per Click advert and wait for the cheques to flood in - except they wont!! There are many flaws in the affiliate software system used to track affiliates details Many affiliate scripts use the "cookie" method However there are many problems with this 1) About 20% of people surfing the web do not have their computer set up correctly to accept cookies. Even if sites prompt them to change their settings most people are so computer illiterate they have absolutely no idea how to change their security settings correctly 2) Most internet surfers bookmark any sites of interest to come back to later As most affiliate scripts operate by a redirection to the merchant site, thjis means the bookmarked page does not contain the affiliate ID and therefore any subsequent sale will be lost 3) Most people when purchasing online require some kind of FREE inducement e.g. a free email course. And only when they have received 7 or 8 emails will they actually go through to buy the product, but then they are not buying under the Affiliate URL, they are buying through the merchant URL These are just some of the pitfalls of common Affiiate Tracking URL's The better marchants do operate a much better system, which does not rely on cookies but rather works by tracking an IP address. On this system there is no way anyone can get round the fact that you have referred the sale However most merchants seems to operate a "cookie" based system which also uses redirection e.g. clickbank which is a very popular ebook portal uses a redirectional cookie based system From The Merchants Point Of View If you are a merchant thinking of setting up an Affiliate Program then absolutely YES you must have one You might be worried at how much you are giving away in commission to affiliates but bear in mind what is written above, you would be crazy not to have your own affiliate program The best way to think of an affiliate program is from the point of view of advertising With an affiliate program you are effectively paying, not per click or per impression but per sale. So you only pay the affiliate for the advertising they have done if and only if this advertising leads to a sale This is the lowest possible cost basis for any advertising anywhere When you consider that many PPC systems require you to pay at least $1 a click and you might need 100 clicks or more to convert, it should be easy to see that you are getting a bargain by relying on affiliates to do all the marketing for you From An Affiliates Point Of View If you are an affiliate and are trying to work out how the heck you get sales from your affiliate URL that you get credit for then remember the best advertising online is always direct email marketing PPC can work but like most marketing techniques is will only work in particular specific circumstances e.g. just putting an advert on PPC will probably cost you a fortune and deliver no sales. However learn how to do PPC advertising and it be a good addition to an overall marketing strategy To return to Driect Email Marketing, please do not confuse this with SPAM or any other kind of unsolicited bulk email including purchased leads/ email addresses or the like. By Direct Email Marketing I mean getting people to sign up for FREE information on your site, using a double opt in system, usually linked to your own autoresponder service This way you are building the most valuable asset for your business - namely an double opt-in email database. You can then send out NOT your affiliate URL on the basis of here's a great product, click my affiliate link now!! - but by emailing an interesting article providing real information which the merchants product is also about. So that you can say at the end of the article - "to find out more about how you can..." click here. You can then insert some form of cloaked URL of the form yourwebsite.com/product.html. The link must not look like an affiliate URL. You should also be very careful to test any cloaked link. suich as those using the Java Script Unescape Code because its possible that the link wont work correctly or give you credit for the sale. With clickbank you do have the advantage of going through to the merchant site and seeing if your affiliate name is printed at the bottom of the page when you go through to clickbank to pay If you follow these ideas I am sure you will make success with an affiliate program either as a Merchant or an Affiliate
No that's not true. IP address based tracking isn't perfect because many users don't have a static IP address. If someone with a dynamic IP address clicks on your affiliate links, closes the site and comes back a few days later to purchase something you won't get a commission because the sale was made from a different IP address.
It's also flooded with people giving advice like this, although well intentioned. Probably? I've seen %'s range from 5% to 75% and higher. It depends on the industry mainly. Actually they do, if you work at it. There is no perfect tracking script or hosted system. It's a numbers game. You have to deal with it and work with honest merchants who believe that honesty pays. Where did you get this statistic? I think it's much lower. No. Most sites check for cookies that can last days, weeks, months... It's a lame merchant if they only give credit for sales made on the same visit as the initial affiliate link referral. A good affiliate tracking system will credit the affiliate in this situation. Also for offline sales via the phone or fax. It depends on the platform used. There are over 25 systems out there. These generalizations don't add much value. True. There are even better methods than IP tracking. CB is used for other digitial products too - not just ebooks. The problem with CB is they have an archaic reporting system. No. Not all merchants should have an Affiliate Program just like not all companies have commissioned sales people. In many cases merchants are crazy to start an affiliate programme - especially if they are not ready. Affiliate marketing is the same as performance marketing. It can cover pay per sale, per click, per signup, per anything. Generally it is cheaper but it doesn't mean you should shy away from other channels like PPC. It's the blended cost-of-sales you need to also look at. No it's not the best. It really depends on the situation, industry, size of list you have, product, etc. What a vague comment. So what's your point? Good point. Yes building a list is important. At this point you might be better off having your own products, if you want to keep those subscribers all to yourself. There are tools for cloaking links. I think lots of people just don't care if they see an affiliate link and the link cloaker vendors are hyping fears that aren't really justified. Some good points although I was wondering where you were wandering at times Cheers, Peter