Affiliate Marketing Blog

How can an affiliate program create the exposure that you need? How can people be rewarded for their contribution to your advertising efforts?

When a quick buck is to be made, abuse is not far behind. Pay per click internet advertising has been around since search engines came about. The real issue is: What is a click worth to you as a vendor? If it is a competitor hiring mongrels in India to click on your ads and run down your advertising budget it is highway robbery!

Why not reward those who drive traffic to you when a sale is made instead. This has been the business model for yonks and it's amazing it has taken all that time to emerge into cyberspace.

The issue was a technical one: How to track a sale back to the person who recommended you in the first place? The answer is called a cookie. It is a short piece of information stored in your web browser as you visit a website. If you come back a few days later that data is still there and can be matched by the page you are re-visiting. That's how websites can remember your username and password. In the case of an affiliate program that's how we can remember who to pay commission to when you purchase something from us.

How is that a better system? When you open your blog or website to advertising you have precious little control over who will peddle their wares on your page. How would you feel if you are an expert in mountain biking and your blog is being defaced by ads for tattoo parlours and psychic readings?

With an affiliate program you have total control on the quality, quantity and appearance of the links you provide for the people you wish to promote. It can be an ordinary hyperlink anchor, a clickable image or an article on your blog.

If you use social media rather than being a webmaster there are tools to insert a post on your facebook page or a tweet on your twitter account. Only when you feel so inclined do those links appear - you need to log in to your account for the process to take place.

Lastly you would want to see some statistics on how your links are performing if no sale is forthcoming yet. The ability to click on your ads to test the system end to end gives confidence as you can see the logs tally each activity.

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