Affiliate Program Ideas Now that the idea of doing business over the internet has been firmly established, many potential internet businessmen are searching for the best way to do business. Usually the choice comes down to whether you want to set up your own business and online store, or sign up for an affiliate program. First of all, let’s define what we mean by an affiliate program. An affiliate program is basically an internet business set up by someone else. They could be selling physical goods, education, information or any other products that can be sold online. By signing up as their affiliate, you are helping them promote their business or store. In return, they will pay you a commission for each sale you bring them. The amount of commission varies between different affiliate programs. 1) EARNINGS So how does an affiliate program differ from starting your own online store? Let’s start by looking at the potential earnings. (After all, the main reason everyone wants to start an internet business is for the money). When you sign up for an affiliate program, you will be paid a commission for each sale you refer to the online store. This commission can range from 5% to 15% for physical products, and possibly up to 50% or more for virtual products such as subscriptions and ebooks. On the other hand, if you start your own store, your profit can be much higher. For virtual products, your profit can be 100% of your selling price. After all, once the newsletter or ebook is created, you do not need to spend any more effort. When someone buys your ebook, they just download it from your website. If you are selling a physical product, your profit depends on whether you are manufacturing the product yourself, or buying from a wholesaler or dropshipping company. Your profit in this case could easily be more than 40% or 50%. So, if you only consider the potential earnings, starting your own business is more lucrative than joining an affiliate program. 2) LOGISTICS However, money isn’t everything (Or so they say). When you are starting your own internet business, there are a number of logistic issues you need to look at. Here are a few things you would need to take care of: 1. Create your website 2. Design your product (if you are selling new products) 3. Create your product (if you are selling new physical products, or any virtual products) 4. Set up an online store 5. Set up a merchant account or payment gateway 6. Set up a warehouse or storage space (if you are selling physical products) 7. Have procedures and staff ready to fulfill orders 8. Set up an affiliate program to get others to market the products for you 9. Monitor for fraud 10. Monitor stock levels As they say, “No pain, no gain”. Having your own store pays very well, but requires a substantial time investment from you. On the other hand, if you sign up for an affiliate program, all you need to do is set up a website to promote the program. All the ads, banners, marketing text etc will be provided to you by the affiliate program. Your only responsibilities would be to get people to visit your website, and hopefully click on the affiliate links to buy the products that you are promoting. 3) CONVERSION Whether you have your own business or are promoting an affiliate program, the bottom line is the conversion rate, or the percentage of visitors that actually buy something from you. A number of factors influence this conversion rate. Factors as quality of the product, quality of the website, customer support are all important. However, I personally believe that the most important factor is trust. When a potential customer arrives at your website, he will need to trust your site enough for him to be willing to buy from you. After all, on the internet you are just a faceless salesman. He doesn’t know who is actually running the site and whether he will actually get the goods that he orders. Having said that, one of the key methods of garnering trust is by recommendation and referral. If a store is being referred to or recommended by another website, the potential customer will feel that the store is trustworthy. After all, if the store is not trustworthy, why would the other website recommend it? This is where affiliate programs shine. When you refer a potential customer to the store for which you are an affiliate, the customer will feel more relieved, since the store is being recommended by your site, a 3rd party. The customer will be more likely to buy from the store, benefiting both the store, and you as well. There are both pros and cons to joining an affiliate program. You might earn less with an affiliate program compared to starting your own store, but I believe the benefits of not having to be responsible for the logistics makes affiliate programs are very viable “passive” source of income. Cash and Pay-per-click Affiliate Programs Millions are paying to get a ride on the Information Super Highway everyday. Now, it is widely known that the Internet is an accessible resource of many income-generating activities. Whether you belong to a private sales company or you are just interested in internet marketing, PPC affiliate programs can be a powerful venue to make money from the Internet. A partnership with an affiliate merchant is a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate: sales are soaring because of exposure and traffic while the affiliate is earning good cash. To make things much simpler: the affiliate merchant provides a strip of advertisement and pays you when someone clicks on the ad’s link. You can get a commission of $0.10to $0.30 for every click, but it sometimes it can go higher depending on your merchant affiliate. Sometimes, merchants require a quota ($1.4 for every 1000 clicks). Plus, you can get discounts from your merchant affiliates if you happen to like their products too. You can just kick back and relax while your website is generating cash. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? What is PCC Affiliate Program? PPC means pay-per-click, wherein you get in partnership with an affiliate company that literally pays you for every click. There are actually two types of PCC affiliate programs- – those who pay a commission based on the number of clicks and the other based on thesales. The pay-per-click scheme is much more popular than pay-per-lead because the affiliate gets paid by just clicking the ad, regardless of whether the visitor buys from the affiliate merchant or not. Plus the chances of a visitor purchasing something from the affiliate merchant are not really that high. In choosing an affiliate program, read the fine print carefully – some pay-per-click programs get the ratio of the number of people who went to your site and the actual people who clicked on the ad. If you have a heavily targeted website, this can hurt your earnings. How do I start? Of course, you need to have a website. Depending on your target audience, choose thebest affiliate merchant that is most related to your topic. For example, your website is about Carpentry then you can search for affiliate programs that sell tools used in carpentry. However, if you don’t have a website, that’s not a problem. You can put up a content site about absolutely anything under the sun like ‘Taking Care of Dogs’ or ‘Decorating your own Home.’ But wait, its not over yet. We are faced by a dilemma – on how to increase traffic! You first need to get internet surfers to see your website, then the ad. How do I increase my traffic? First, design your website in such a way that it will attract internet users. A user-friendly site is always recommended so that the customers will know which one to click. Take into consideration the look and feel of the advertisement. If it doesn’t look professional, most likely, users will just ignore it. Place the ad on a strategic location – one where users can see it clearly. Visibility of the ad is always important. Another way is to post a link to your website in forums, web communities, ezine articles or bulletin boards. However, this method requires a lot of effort – that defeats your purpose of getting easy money in the first place! The key is to do something once and forget about it. It’s like putting your business on autopilot. To maintain you pay-per-click business, be sure to track down site activity, so you are updated on how much money you are making. Can I make more money? If you think you can go to the next level, you can try a two-tier affiliate program. This gives you the power to recruit affiliates. Other than the money you get from your website’s clicks, you will also get a percentage of what your affiliate generates. Some companies give 30% to a soaring 50% commission on all referral sales. Remember, you should be able to manage and monitor your affiliate program. If you can recruit more affiliates, then you can get paid more without even moving a finger! Choose affiliates that can most likely attract more internet users and bring more traffic. You just have to know the right people. A Blog for us to share many exciting money-making “Affiliate Programs” where you can earn some extra commission money promoting products for others. Just add their affiliate text link or image link to your websites and/or emails and earn a commission for every sale via your affiliate link. We will also show you how to protect your affiliate links and also offer you many Marketing ideas for promoting the affiliate products so that you can earn more commission money. Resources for many affiliate tools and ebooks will also be offered for your review. Many Internet Marketers make a good living with “Affiliate Programs” and you can as well. For example - we have a few of our Popular PDF EBooks that we offer you 50% Commission - you can review the program and sign up for Free at.