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Now that you've seen what affiliate sites look like, you're probably pretty keen to get started on your own. One of the best places to start is by investigating what affiliate programs are out there. In this lesson we're going to give you an introduction to affiliate networks, which are a good place to start your search. We'll give you a closer look at ClickBank — one of the largest affiliate networks on the internet and home to some pretty high commission products — and we'll show you some other networks to check out as well.
But first things first, what is an affiliate network?
Introduction to Affiliate Networks
Affiliate networks are the coordinators of the affiliate world. They facilitate between the merchant and the affiliate, responsible for processing payments from the customer, keeping track of affiliate commissions and paying affiliates.
They're a very good place to start when you're looking for affiliate products to promote, since many will maintain a directory that you can browse by subject.
We'll take a look at one such network: ClickBank.com.
Clickbank is one of the best affiliate networks for digital products, like software and eBooks. The good thing about software and eBooks is that they tend to have a lot higher commissions than physical products. (You can probably figure out the reason for that yourself -- software and eBooks have no manufacturing costs per item, so merchants don't have to worry about affiliate commissions cutting into their margins.) Commissions of between 50% and 75% are reasonably common for digital products.
If you click on "Marketplace" you'll be taken to ClickBank's directory of affiliate products. Here you can browse affiliate programs by subject.
Clickbank provides some statistics on affiliate programs in their listings.
$/sale = How much you earn for each sale
Future $ = If the product has recurring billing (for example, monthly memberships) what sort of money might you expect beyond the initial sale? If the product doesn't have recurring billing, this figure will be blank.
Total $/sale = How much you earn for each sale when the initial sale and future income are added together. If the product doesn't have recurring billing this figure will be the same as the initial commission.
%/sale = What percentage of the sale price is your cut.
%refd = What percentage of the number of sales the site makes comes from affiliates.
Grav = Gravity. Products with high gravity attract a lot of affiliates while products with low gravity have comparatively less exposure. Take this figure with a grain of salt, since it is open to manipulation, but in general you'll probably want to look at products which do have a good amount of affiliate activity, since that obviously means that people are making money from them.
Signing up to become a Clickbank affiliate is a pretty straightforward process.
Click the "Sign up" link at the top of the page. Fill in the details as required and click "Submit" and follow instructions from there.
Once you have your clickbank ID you're able to promote any product on the Clickbank network. When you're browsing products you'll see a link to "create hoplink". Click this, enter your clickbank ID and the site will generate your hoplink.
You must use your hoplink any time you link to the merchant site. If you just link directly to the merchant site using the website's usual address you won't receive credit for any visitors who click that link and then purchase. They won't have been tracked!
Logging into your ClickBank Account
When you belong to an affiliate network you're able to check how much you've earned by logging into your account and reviewing the statistics. Clickbank pools the commissions from your whole account into a daily amount, which is shown on the first page when you log in.
You can also delve further into your statistics and break it down by product in the reports section.
So that's a basic introduction to Clickbank. There are many other affiliate networks out there that you may wish to join as well. Some ones you might want to look at are:
Other Affiliate Networks
PayDotCom: http://www.PayDot.com
Share A Sale: http://www.Shareasale.com
LinkShare: http://www.Linkshare.com
Clixgalore: http://www.ClixGalore.com
Other ways of finding Affiliate Programs
Some affiliate programs operate outside of affiliate networks, so you won't see them listed in directories. Finding these affiliate programs is more word of mouth: You can look around at other affiliate sites in your market and see which products they're promoting, and then see if you can find a link to the affiliate program on the merchant website. You could also email the merchant site directly and ask.
One thing you might encounter is the "invite only" affiliate program. Some sites restrict entry to their affiliate program to people who have already purchased their product, or they choose to approve affiliates on a case-by-case basis. Often this is to prevent affiliates from getting hefty discounts on their products by purchasing through their own affiliate links. If you contact the merchant directly and plead your case, they might let you in. But usually there's not much you can do aside from purchasing the product.
Lesson Summary
In this lesson you've learned:
That affiliate networks co-ordinate between affiliates and merchants. They're responsible for tracking affiliate commissions, processing payments and paying affiliates.
How to find affiliate products in affiliate networks using ClickBank.com as an example. ClickBank.com is one of the largest affiliate networks for digital products.
How to sign up as a member of ClickBank
Some other affiliate networks you might wish to look at
Some other ways of finding affiliate programs
Word of mouth
Seeing what other affiliates are promoting
Browsing websites
Emailing the merchant directly |
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发表于 2009-1-17 00:02:09
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