Tuesday, December 30, 2008

All About Affiliate Marketing Program

By Don Bethune

An affiliate marketing program is a program in which various advertisers pay to webmasters for putting up advertisements of the advertisers on their webpage or in the e-mails that the webmasters send. It can be any form, the sole purpose being advertising the adds of the advertisers.

The ease with which a webmaster can participate in affiliate marketing programs has made it one of the most well known ways to earn income without leaving the comforts of home. Many people have their own websites and this allows almost anyone (housewives, homebound, etc.) to have their own 'home business' and realize monetary freedom.

So how and why do advertisers pay the webmasters hosting their ads? First, it is important to understand how sites are ranked when someone searches the web. When a web user searches for a particular site or term, the listing the search engine provides is from website rankings. These rankings are produced when someone visits or browses a website. The higher a website is listed in the search results, the more hits per day it receives, thus improving its ranking furher.

Having an add on such a page would be lucrative to any company as it can account to hundreds of new customers everyday. Therefore the price that advertisers pays to the webmasters depends on the number of hits of the webpage on which the add is going to appear on.

There are different versions of affiliate marketing program. Some of them include cost per click, cost per thousand, cost per action, cost per lead and so on. Cost per click as the name says is getting paid for every click on the advertisement of the advertiser.

In a pay per click the advertiser pays the webmaster each time a web site user clicks on the hosted ad. Likewise, in the per thousand click scale the webmaster is paid for every thousand times a web user clicks on the ad's link. A per action scenario requires that the web user must not only click through the ad link, but also complete a particular action, such as filling out customer information, signing up for a contest, or perhaps completing a purchase before payment is generated to the webmaster. Another payment scale type is cost per lead which is similar to cost per action, but the webmaster sends potential customer information to the advertiser much like one company you purchase airline tickets for might sell your information to their credit card company.

How do webmasters choose the right affiliate marketing program for their websites? Many simply search the internet! The best way to determine which program best suits a webmaster is to search for affiliate programs, evaluate the payments schedules, and determine if ad placement is suitable for their site (size and location requirements).

The income earned from such programs can vary depending on the number of hits your webpage receives. But is the income taxable or not? It depends on the region you are staying in and the type of government. The opportunities in this field are enormous and are worth exploiting! - 15634

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