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Learning about Affiliate Advertising

Affiliate advertising (sometimes also referred to as affiliate marketing) is the term currently used to describe one type of program a web site typically sets up to allow other sites to advertise their products and/or services and to receive commissions in return.

Such programs are often open to almost anyone with a web site, newsletter, or other electronic means of running the affiliate program’s ads. Typically, the web site either creates an affiliate program Web page on its own site or contracts with an affiliate network to promote and run its affiliate program.

Either way, companies that create such programs develop various types of text and image advertisements, embed them with special tracking codes that allow them to know who sent them the traffic, and encourage affiliates to use these advertisements to promote their sites.

GETTING UP TO SPEED

Affiliate advertising is one of those concepts that can seem a bit overwhelming, even after you have tried it for a while. The way to grasp the whole subject is to break it into components. Affiliate advertising can be best understood by defining its three basic components: affiliates, affiliate programs, and affiliate networks. Once you have a basic understanding of these elements, you’ll be able to start signing up for programs and creating your first accounts.

Who Are the Affiliates?

You are. Affiliates are entrepreneurs like yourself who are willing to advertise other web sites’ products and services for a commission. These affiliate commissions may be only a secondary revenue stream for some entrepreneurs whose primary online business is complemented by running relevant ads on some pages. For others, it may represent their primary revenue stream. Affiliates can use one of several models to conduct their affiliate advertising activities.

Personal and Business Web Sites.

Traditionally, affiliate marketers have placed advertisements on web sites they create themselves. These web sites may provide a product or service of their own, running a few ads in appropriate locations to create a little extra revenue.

In some cases these web sites might contain some type of content (news, blogs, etc.) to attract visitors, while relying entirely on advertisements to generate revenue. In either case, the key to the success of their affiliate advertising revenue stream is the ability not just to drive traffic to their site, but also to provide advertisements relevant to the content of the site that their visitors are likely to find inviting.

One of the most commonly seen types of ads today is not a traditional banner ad, but a dynamically generated ad that relates in some way to the Web page content near it. For instance, if you create a Web page about science and astronomy, or if you simply make a passing mention of telescopes in your blog, you can place an advertising code provided by Google AdSense on the page and it will dynamically serve up a mixture of ads, all related to your site in this case, astronomy.

E-publications.

Regular publications such as newsletters that are e-mailed to subscribers are effective ways to reach customers who have “opted in” to what you have to say by signing up. As there is no cost associated with sending an e-mail message beyond the time and effort put into writing it, these e-publications can be cost effective once you have built up a sizable list of subscribers, that is.

Newsletters can take time to prepare, and attracting and retaining subscribers can be a very tricky task. E-publications sent to active subscribers should not be confused with unwanted and unrequested junk e-mail. You should mail e-publications and newsletters only to users who request to be added as regular subscribers to the publication.

Free Software or Freeware.

An excellent source of revenue can be embedded affiliate ads in helpful programs that Web surfers can download for free.

A freeware program, which performs a service the user wants and needs, makes it clear that downloading the product will result in the display of occasional advertisements so that the service can remain free.

This should not be confused with the unscrupulous practice of embedding spyware, which may install itself uninvited or which may not explain the commercial aspects of software before it is downloaded.

Search Marketing.

My preferred method of advertising, and the only advertising method that will be covered in detail in this article, is search marketing.

Or, to be more specific, paid search marketing on a variety of paid search and content networks. Paid search refers to the practice of charging for the placement of ads in search results or on specific content-related web sites (remember AdSense?) a practice that makes search and content networks lots of money.

Most search marketers place ads on paid search and content networks such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. On MSN, as on other search and content networks, these paid ads appear both at the top and on the right-hand side of a page of search results.

These paid search advertisements are my bread and butter, and using them to generate wealth is the primary focus of this article. I have made millions of dollars already, and if you apply yourself, you just might make a few million yourself.