Affiliate Marketing can be the missing link your online advertising has been missing.  For online store owners, affiliate programs can generate as much as 80% of their yearly revenue, and circumvent their reliance on online or offline advertising.  The concept is simple, you determine whether you want to pay commissions to your partners for products or services, or commissions on total sales in general, and website publishers promote and refer business to your site.

Getting affiliate programs right is the tricky part, especially in saturated e-commerce channels such as consumer electronics.”

Although some online retailers do rely on affiliate marketing for the majority of their revenues, the best approach to online marketing success is including affiliate programs as one component within a holistic online marketing strategy.  Could your business benefit from affiliate programs?  That depends on which model makes the most sense:

• Cost per million impressions (CPM):  can be used through programs offered by Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or Microsoft adCenter, but can also be sought on high-traffic sites that run their own advertising programs.  Finding these sites and negotiating with their advertising sales department is our specialty.
• Cost per click (CPC):  in this model you pay for every visitor you get through your ads.  Google made this model famous with Adwords, and still dominates the pay per click market.
• Cost per lead/Cost per acquisition:  useful for site owners that cannot quantify sales numbers, and/or share that information with advertisers.  Commissions are paid on each lead or acquisition made by the company.
• Commissions on Sales:  many site owners that have a lot of products usually pay fixed commissions to advertisers based on total sales for a specified period.
• Commissions on Products:  online stores that have less products or highly sophisticated content management systems (like Amazon.com) may specify specific commissions for individual products, categories of products, or sale items.

For a more detailed quote on getting started with affiliate marketing programs, contact us today!