In the field of affiliate marketing software, there is a side for sellers and a side for normal affiliates, we are going to discuss the side of the normal affiliates first and in the second part of the article, you will find a discussion about affiliate software for sellers.
The field of marketing and affiliate software is very important because it enable individuals and companies to automate certain tasks that would be impossible or extremely difficult to do without computers or affiliate software. When you want to work as an affiliate marketer, you only have to register at the page of the merchant and the merchant will give you links that are what you are going to use to promote the website and you will be given access to the member's area to be able to use the advertisement banner codes created by the seller.
The Many Kinds of Commissions
There are many kinds of arrangement in the affiliate game.
- Pay Per Sale The most known is pay per sale, where the seller will pay you when a sale is done. The affiliate software from the merchant may or may not send an email to the affiliate when a sale is done, but you always could go into your statistics to see your visitors and sales.
- Pay Per Lead Also known as CPA (cost per action), where the seller will pay you whenever a client makes some action, like filling a form, sending an email or calling to a telephone number for more information. Generally speaking, it is easier to make a sale with this kind of offers because there is not sale or presell involved in the process on your part.
- Pay Per Click In the pay per click arrangement the seller will pay you when a click to the advertised program is made. Not popular among merchants because the high probability of fraud that could happen.
How Sellers Know That You Made The Sale?
Within the affiliate members area, you will find special links that have unique codes assigned to them that will identify you to the affiliate software when a purchase is made. The buyer don't need to purchase the product immediately, because those links also put cookies into the client's PC, those cookies are special codes that could tell the seller which was the partner that referred the sale when it is completed even years after, as long the client didn't changed their PC, is used another browser or deleted the cookies (most users don't even know what cookies are).
How To Select The Right Niches For Fast Earnings?
As an affiliate, there are many affiliate programs you could choose to promote and you have to be very wise to choose one that doesn't have much competition in order to have successful sales, because when there is a lot of competition, sales are harder to get, advertising will be more expensive and all the venture becomes riskier. A very good affiliate software for users that will make your life much easier is affiliate elite, which will reveal some niches with low competition and high demand.
Affiliate Software For Companies
If you are a company that want more exposure in the marketplace, without incurring into much risks, you could start your very own affiliate program using affiliate software where you will have a lot of people promoting your products and only pay them when sales are made. This is a perfect arrangement for companies that need more exposure in the marketplace, but don't want to take more risks, in fact this model is so effective that is hard to believe that some merchants still don't have their affiliate program in place.
There are many options to set up an affiliate program for your own company.
- a) If you have a physical product:
- Commission Junction The best known affiliate network out there for physical products. They will handle all for you, banner distribution to affiliates, communication with affiliates and payments, but it will not be cheap to set up an affiliate program with them.
- Shareasale Not so well known, but they are recognized to have the best tracking to sales for affiliates and although their interface looks somewhat clumsy, they are very professional and it will be cheaper to work with them than CJ.
- Linkshare Not well known, but a good option too.
- b) If you have a digital product:
- ClickBank Clickbank is the grandaddy for delivering digital products and they will manage all for you, they will track commissions and will pay to your affiliates always on time, which makes them a very good option for your business. They charge 7% of the sale and a little fixed amount for every sale, not cheap, but for digital products is very acceptable because of the high margins.
- PayDotCom This is a smaller networks and will take care of the tracking, but will not pay the affiliates for you. You will have to make the payments to them each month.
If your product is downloadable directly from the Internet, you have these options:
In either case, you always have the chance to create your own closed affiliate program purchasing specialized affiliate software, independently from these networks. There are many things to consider if you do it this way, because there are advantages and disadvantages when you use your own affiliate software.
The disadvantages are that you must do all the work to pay affiliates every month and you will have to resolve any issues that may appear with your affiliate program and this is the most important reason you will probably need a dedicated person for this work called "affiliate manager". The affiliate manager will be the one that builds relationships with affiliates and clear all doubts about commissions earned, promotions and requirements you have to comply to promote a product and how the use the affiliate software to earn more money, while defending the brand that is promoted using affiliate marketing.
The advantages are that you can setup your affiliate program exactly as you like, for example: You could create contests, also you could pay better to some affiliate based on different things and you could make custom programming to the affiliate software to make it work exactly like you want if the source of the affiliate software is given to you (almost nobody will give you the source code to modify their software because of the risk of copy).
The Best Affiliate Software To Make Your Own Affiliate Program
All those reasons make this affiliate software, hands down, the most powerful, effective affiliate software platform for companies that want to host their own in-house affiliate program, without having to pay too much for doing it.
Conclusion
In this day and age, companies that don't have an affiliate program to help their businesses will come to an end because of increasing advertising costs and competion, but the smart ones that seek individuals to promote their offers for free and get paid only when sales are made will thrive in any state of the economy. Finally, you should treat your affiliates well because they will be the livehood of your business and do yourself a favor and promote your affiliate program aggressively in order to make it successful. Lastly, ensure that your affiliate software works flawlessly because the trust of your affiliates on you depends on this.
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