In the mid to late 1990s, there were only a handful of affiliate networks. Now there are hundreds. Which networks are best for you and who you should trust, is the biggest factors when joining a new affiliate network. In this article, we are going to breakdown the benefits of using an affiliate network, why some are better than others, and a few of the top performing affiliate networks in our industry.
What is an Affiliate Network?
The best way to think of an affiliate network, is to think of a middle man between merchants and affiliates. If you’ve ever bought a house, you have a lawyer and an escrow account. The seller and buyer won’t exchange money/house until both parties are satisfied… the same concept can be applied to an affiliate network. The main reason why an affiliate network exists, is so an affiliate can find a decent amount of offers in one location, while merchants can have a lot of affiliates finding their offers. The affiliate network does the dirty work of having to recruit affiliates, bring in new advertisers, track leads and send out payments. With such work to be done by the networks, they are usually receiving commissions in the 15-30% range for their work. (Example: If an offer is paying $10 per lead, the advertiser is probably paying $13 and the network earns $3 per lead.)
Why You Should Use an Affiliate Network?
As an affiliate, you have a lot of options for running offers and making money. The best and most efficient way to find new offers and get started, is to join an affiliate network. Not only do networks have a great deal of offers/merchants to choose from, but they offer support, creative services and can pay more on most offers if you can provide volume. Most importantly, you can run several different offers at the same time, then receive one check at the end of the week/month.
Benefits of Using an Affiliate Network:
- All tracking and payments are done by one network.
- Networks act as a middle man, and in most cases will pay their affiliates, if the network itself is not paid by the advertiser.
- Rewards programs and incentives. A lot of networks like to motivate their affiliates to bring in more volume and earn more money. Some networks offer a 1-2% bonus on monthly earnings, or will reward affiliates with vacations or other prizes.
Marketing Methods for Affiliate Network
If you read the first two articles, you now should have a good idea of what affiliate marketing is, and how to join an affiliate network to find new offers. Let’s move on to the “marketing methods” and how you can start promoting offers and making money.On Site / Web Site
The most obvious method for advertising, is on site advertising. This type of advertising can consist of anything from text link advertising, to banner advertising. Almost every web site you visit has some form on site advertising. When buying banner advertising on a web site, advertisers are usually paying on a monthly or CPM (cost per 1,000 views) basis.
Social Networks
Two of the major social networks with great advertising platforms are MySpace and Facebook. The huge benefit to advertising on social networks, is that you can heavily target your ad campaigns to nearly any demographic. MySpace accepts several different banner sizes for ad campaigns, while Facebook offers 120×80 images and text advertising. Both platforms are setup for CPM or CPC bidding.
Search Marketing / Pay Per Click
The bread and butter of affiliate marketing is known as search engine marketing or “pay per click”. When you go to Google and search for any term, you will see an a separate listing of sites on the right side of the page called “Sponsored Links”. Advertisers are listed in this section because they are paying to be shown on the first page of search results, by bidding on specific search terms. The major search engines for PPC advertising are Google, Yahoo and Bing.
Pay Per View
Over the past year, pay per view or PPV advertising has grown tremendously. PPV advertising is usually in the form of a pop under window which spawns when the user visits a web site. PPV advertising is very cheap, and can cost lower than a penny per view, but can also send thousands of impressions within minutes. When advertising with pay per view campaigns, you select what interests/web sites you want your pop unders to appear on.
Email / Mailing Lists
Another effective type of advertising is done through email and mailing lists. The difference between regular email and advertising and building up a mailing list is crucial. When sending out emails for affiliate marketing / profit purposes, you are usually sending out solo mailings with just an advertisement. These emails are usually from site visitors when they fill out surveys, forms or request to receive mail from third parties. The other type of mailing is when you are trying to build up a mailing list for your web site or product. In most cases, you are trying to build up a loyal readership and don’t want to spam your readers. The profit in a mailing list is that the readers will keep coming back, and actually enjoy your mailings.
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