Affiliate Marketing, Moving Towards Maturity
by: Steven Gerber
The internet has brought about many changes in the business world; business owners who cannot afford to put up different offices in various places see a ray of hope with this development. Through the internet, they are able to reach all parts of the world without actually traveling and putting up traditional stores and offices in each place.
One method of introducing your business on the net is through affiliate marketing. A very much popular method is recognized by any business entity, and that is affiliate marketing. Through this method, the affiliate is given a reward every time a person visits or subscribes a particular company's website. The affiliate is being rewarded because of his efforts in promoting your business.
Emerging businesses on the net is finding this method quite handy. The affiliate is compensated through a registrant, a certain value for each 'click', or commission for every sale. It can also be any combination of the three.
You will not pay the affiliate without gaining any result, which makes this modern method attractive. So with affiliate marketing, you are sure to gain customers rather than losing them.
Your business can get as much as a 20% increase in revenue because of affiliate marketing. E-commerce sites often run affiliate programs of their own, but in other cases, a third party is used to track sales or traffic referred from the affiliates.
Then there are also the multi-tier programs which uses a network of sub-affiliates and sign ups. Through this, the commission is usually distributed to a hierarchy of referral network.
However, most programs associated with affiliate marketing are one-tier, because the multi version can be rather confusing. Business owner who are thinking of affiliate marketing should first conduct a valuable research on the different options available for them on the net. Your solution can be through hosted services, a software which can stand alone, shopping carts, and affiliate networks through a third party.
Back in the early days of the internet, many affiliates use spam, and that is why before, affiliate marketing did not have a very good impression. Presently, spamming is already prohibited because affiliate marketing has already matured with different successful methods.
The web's new face today has a great impact on affiliate marketing. And this includes interactive communities, blogging, and other new web technologies. Now, business owners can communicate better with affiliates, they have more chance to get a closer picture of what affiliate marketing really is.
The truth is, there are unscrupulous affiliates on the loose, and they are there just to make money. But because of the new developments on the net, it is much harder for them to thrive in it. They are easily detected and the community is notified with great efficiency and speed.
Today, the internet caters to many emerging businesses that wants to take part in earning big money. And up to this time, the number of businesses that trust affiliate marketing is still growing. This brings about more maturity on the part of the affiliates because they face a huge challenge. With many competitors rising, the affiliates should be able to encompass all the obstacles they may encounter. And though the business has a very little chance to get attention on the net, once it does, the rewards that you will get are still greater.
The gap between offline and online media is slowly being worked out. Today advertising is becoming more professional in many ways. The chance to be successful whether your business is online or offline is much greater these days than it was before.
About The Author
Steven Gerber is a professional copywriter & marketing consultant. He is a protégé of Dan Lok, the World’s #1 Website Conversion Expert, & in Steven’s totally biased opinion simply THE BEST. You will find the latest internet marketing techniques & tricks at:
http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com.
