Websites for Affiliate Marketing
- from £395/€475/$645
Are you interested in starting an internet business that you can run from home, or, indeed, anywhere that you happen to be? If so, then affiliate marketing may be the ideal solution.
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based marketing system in which an online retailing business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Depending on the type of business, as an affiliate you earn money in the form of commissions on sales, lead generation, or referrals.
An affiliate marketing business can be started very simply, and, no matter what your interests are, you will be able to find programs to promote. The retailer (merchant) handles shipping, after sales service, stock control, returns and refunds - the affiliate does not get involved in any of those issues.
Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use conventional advertising methods, such as organic search engine optimisation, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and display advertising. Affiliates may also use other methods, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner. Along with search engines, e-mail, and website syndication, affiliate marketing plays a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.
How does affiliate marketing work?
The affiliate marketing system has four core players at its heart: the merchant, the network, the publisher (affiliate) and the consumer. The market has grown sufficiently in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialist third party vendors.
A 'merchant' is an online retailer with a transactional website where consumers can buy products or services. Affiliates are website owners who can send traffic, via links to the merchant's site. They do this on the basis that any sales generated from this traffic will earn them an agreed commission.
The affiliate promotes their site in order to gain traffic, and then sends traffic on to the merchant's website, at no cost to the merchant. The merchant rewards the affiliate if their traffic completes a purchase.
A consumer visits an affiliate's website (for example a shopping portal or directory). The customer finds a product (or retailer) and clicks the link to be taken to the merchant's site to review or purchase. The customer completes the purchase online, and tracking software records the key purchase data such as sale amount, IP address, date and time, etc. The merchant has a period of 'grace' to consider the sale complete, and then pays commission due to the affiliate for sales generated.
What is included in our package?
A website selling the products of your choice, with your choice of domain name, including registration and hosting for the first two years.
Easy to follow instructions on joining the major affiliate companies, and setting up the links from your site.
Advice on product selection, and marketing and promotion of the site.
Submission of the site to search engines, including Yahoo, Google, etc.
For an example of a simple affiliate marketing website, including a Clickbank product, Amazon store and Google advertising, please click here.
To find out more, or request a quotation, please complete and submit our request form.
Affiliate marketing FAQs
Do I need to know about the website programming code?
No - the website will be supplied 'ready to run', including the links to the various merchant sites. You will need to set up affiliate accounts for the various merchants and their agents (such as Ebay, Commission Junction, Affiliate Future, Clickbank, Amazon and Google Adsense). The majority are free to join, and are easy to set up!
We assist you with the setup of these accounts, and with subsequent maintenance, where needed. Each of them provide codes which are inserted into your website, and are used to record your earnings.
Are there any running costs?
The website needs to be registered and hosted, and we recommend a supplier of those services whose charges are currently (June 2009) around £55 for two years, including a .com domain name and VAT. The first two years are included in the price of our package, however - so you don't have to worry about this for a while!
The only other running costs will be marketing and advertising your site to bring traffic (visitors) to it. There are many possibilities, including some forms of 'free' advertising, so that you can determine the amount you want to spend on this form of promotion. We can advise you in more detail on the available options.
How much can I expect to earn?
That is an understandable question, but one that is impossible to answer! As has already been mentioned, the owner of an affiliate website needs to promote that site in order to bring traffic to the site; and the effort expended on those promotional activities, and their success, will influence the revenue gained from successful referrals from the site. You then need to monitor the success of your efforts, and fine tune them to improve the results - so, over time, the earnings for a given amount of effort should improve. However, don't fall into the trap of thinking that you can simply sit back, do nothing, and watch the money flow in - it simply doesn't work like that!
