Affiliate marketing is growing every day and is an easy way for businesses or personal websites to bring in additional money. Companies that offer affiliate-marketing services also offer free registration and free features if you sign up and utilize their company s features and merchants. Service providers and affiliates have a symbiotic relationship; the service providers earn money through the affiliates and the affiliates earn money through the service providers. In addition, the service providers provide merchants and products for affiliates to promote and the more affiliates a company has the more merchants they can gain. Knowing that each party is dependent upon the other, affiliates can be selective and choose the company they feel will provide them with the most benefits.
Affiliates are also known through many service providers as publishers. A publisher is a webmaster that selects the advertisements (products and merchants) they feel would appeal to their website traffic. As traffic flows from the publisher s website through the advertisements to the product or merchant s website, or as sales are made, publishers then receive a commission.
Before you sign up with an affiliate marketing company, it is important to know what merchants they represent and if those merchants would appeal to your site traffic. Explore the marketing company s website, find out the number of advertisers they represent and who they are. Some companies allow you to perform searches for a category or product before you register as an affiliate.
As you search products and advertisers it is important to pay attention to the percent commission, you will earn from each sale. Some advertisers pay per click and per lead, but most pay per acquisition. An acquisition is a sale. Different companies will offer the same advertiser with different percentage rates. It is clear that you want to select a company you trust with a percentage that will reward you for your efforts.
Because affiliate-marketing companies are free to register with, you can sign up for as many as you want. If you sign up for one and then decide you would also like to market with another one, sign up with them as well. Large businesses often have several accounts with a variety of marketing companies. We suggest that you explore your choices before signing up, because if you sign up for each one you come across; you are less likely to notice the fine print in your affiliate legal agreement. Some affiliate marketing companies will charge you a fee if you do not bring in enough revenue through your advertisements; however, if you explore your choices and sign up for the ones you feel provide the features you are looking for, rest assured, you are safe.
Each company sets a payment frequency and a payment threshold that they commit their affiliates to abide by. Some companies will pay the affiliate once they have reached $1; other companies commit their affiliates to make $100 before they can receive a paycheck. Most companies allow flexibility and provide options that permit their users to change that threshold, though they still have the amount they will not go under.
If being paid weekly is a priority for you, make sure you study the payment frequencies of these affiliate-marketing companies. While some do offer weekly payments, others pay quarterly. You will want to pay attention to how you will receive the money as well. Direct deposit, PayPal, check or gift card are all options that affiliate marketing services provide for their publishers, but not all companies offer each form of payment, so pay attention to how you often you want to get paid, how you prefer to receive it and how long it will take the money to get to you.
With the selection of companies offered today, it is hard to know which one to choose. We have compared services and provided you with the top ten affiliate marketing service providers we feel are the best choices to use. In their own ways, each offers something unique to the affiliate-marketing world. Decide what is important to you in a company and view our matrix to see what companies provide that specific service. It is also important to know how you want to advertise and what companies have those features or options. Different things work for different sites and people, and it is important to remember your choice of affiliate marketing companies is up to you.
