ONLINE RESOURCE OF THE MONTH

Affiliate Programs and Marketing Resources
from addme.com

Affiliate programs enable affiliates (typically a website owner) to harness their current traffic volumes and direct traffic to specific products and services provided by a third party, encouraging the visitor/traffic to purchase or simply enquire – in return the publisher of the affiliate program rewards the affiliate with a commission.

The affiliate commission will vary depending on the program and what the publisher decides on a reasonable reward for the referral.
Putting it simply, if you refer a sale to me, I reward you, generally, with money.

Many publishers run their own affiliate program, a good example of this would be the Trellian Partner Program. The Trellian partner program helps sites such as Addme generate revenue by promoting the search engine optimization tools and keyword discovery tools.
There are also some great resources on the net to search through lists of affiliate programs, the first one which springs to mind (and we sometimes use) is Commission Junction.

Affiliate Linking Methods
There are many instances of WebPages and entire websites dedicated to specific products. This is a great way of channeling traffic to ONE product.

Though the affiliate site looks great, dedicated to the one product, the affiliate is linking to the main page of the publisher’s site. The publisher may be selling a number of products – thus the visitor may get distracted and move off to another website, the affiliate loosing the sale.
Many affiliate programs allow the affiliate to “deep link” into the publisher’s site, this delivering the traffic to a specific product page i.e. direct to the order form. Thus, driving the traffic directly through to the specific product page, decreasing the risk of them getting lost and moving onto another website.

Forms of Affiliate Linking
There are many methods used to link to affiliate websites, how an affiliate links to a site often dictates what medium they are using.

Text linking – a simple text link within a document or webpage. This is the most subtle of all affiliate linking strategies.

Search Box - Generally added to the affiliate’s website as an extra search option / box. When a visitor uses the search box this then populates a page which then links through to the publisher’s website.

Banner Links – these are great to use in emails and sites that supports advertising (these days which site doesn’t do this).

White Label/Co-Branding – The Affiliate will be given the ability to customize the appearance of the affiliate program i.e. the affiliate will link to a order form for the product page, this form will maintain the look and feel of the affiliate website – though hosted on the publishers network. The publisher will still manage the purchase process (payment gateways and merchant facilities). The affiliate makes the commission.