What is an Affiliate Program?

Answer:
In terms of Internet-based marketing, an affiliate program

is a mutually beneficial arrangement between the owner of a website and an online merchant such as Amazon.com. The website owner agrees to post a promotional link to the merchant's site and in return the merchant pays a percentage of any sales that result from that link.

An affiliate program allows less-visited websites an opportunity to align themselves with major online merchants and possibly earn some residual income.
For example, a website dedicated to cycling could join an affiliate program and provide a link to a specific cycling book sold in the merchant's online store. A visitor to the affiliate's website may decide to click on that link to the book, then order the book through the merchant. The merchant would send a percentage of the sale price to the affiliate website, whether the site had 100 or 100,000 unique visitors. The affilitate website may also agree to post a more general link to the merchant site and earn a percentage on all sales which can be traced back to that link.

An affiliate program may also offer an arrangement where affiliate websites earn some money by simply generating traffic through clicks, or by customers filling out surveys or personal questionnaires for later use as sales leads for the merchant. These types of affiliate programs may not pay as much as a pay-per-sale arrangement, but they can be steadier sources of income over time. The trick for website owners is to create enough traffic to increase the possible number of click-throughs to the merchant's site. If a website gets 100 unique visits, for example, and 2 visitors click on the merchant's link, the click-through rate would be 2%. Getting 10,000 unique visits with the same 2% click-through rate would mean 200 potential customers for the merchant and more money for the affiliate. Finding an appropriate merchant for the affiliate's demographics is also an important consideration when participating in an affilitate program.


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