Perhaps you’ve spent some time on the net, enough time to run into the term “web affiliate program”. You may have also seen that this could make people money, significant amounts of money in fact, acting often as a passive source of income. It does of course, require maintenance, but for the most part, it can handle itself for you.
A web affiliate program or associate programs as some people would call them, is a program that takes full advantage of the internet to further create traffic and thus, income. It is a setup or an agreement between two people or businesses by which payment is given only for traffic that results in a purchase, a commission of sorts. The amount paid is usually agreed upon before hand and is usually based on the amount of traffic sent over or a similar count.
Because of cookies, the more traffic that can be sent, the more money there is to be made. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bazos, initially created a web affiliate program to get more business into the now world famous site. Affiliates made sure that Amazon got traffic , for the traffic, they got paid and Amazon made business. This set up allows for maximum exposure while at the same time allowing you to focus on the services or the products that your site may be offering.
There are a number of payment setups. While they can vary, most of them offer a pay-per setup, or payment upon an objective change. For the aforementioned Amazon.com example, it is a pay-per-sale setup. It would be unfair if Amazon had to pay everyone who went to merely look , they only pay the affiliate once a sale has been made. Some sites may not actually be in sales and instead, offer a pay per click setting. This is when the link to the main site from the affiliate site is clicked. What they do or how much they do on the site itself is irrelevant. The affiliate is simply paid for getting the person there.
Other programs include an internet based network marketing model, also known as a two-tier program. A residual program on the other hand is a more long term setup. This means that a long as a consumer sent to a site keeps purchasing or availing of services from that site the affiliate gets paid. This is a rarely offered option, but a good one if you find it.
The internet’s a great place to make money if you know where to look. Luckily there are plenty of people out there looking for more exposure, more ways to make sure that people know about their product. In fact, it’s easier to get into an affiliate program rather than to get advertisers to run onto your site. The payment setup the biggest reason that it’s easy to get into it , after all, they don’t have to pay unless they actually get some business. Now you know how a web affiliate program works and probably, how to take advantage of it for yourself as well.
