Are you in need of additional income? Or are you planning to set up an online business, but you still don’t have any product to sell? If so, affiliate marketing is probably your best solution. With affiliate marketing, you won’t need to worry about creating your own products to sell. All you need is a website with relevant content, that is related to the products you want to promote. By becoming an affiliate, you can start earning money right away!
Affiliate marketing is a business relationship between a merchant and his/her affiliates. As an affiliate marketer you drive traffic to the product vendor’s website. If that traffic is converted into sales, i.e., a visitor purchasing the vendor’s product, or becoming a lead for the company, you as the affiliate who directed the traffic, will be compensated. Compensation is usually is a commission based on a percentage of the sale generated, or a fixed fee.
Promising a lot of benefits both for the vendor and the affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site offers an affiliate program, that any one can join. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program, by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes, and a lot of other benefits. Do all the affiliate programs offer the same benefits?
Most affiliate programs would pay you a one-time commission for every sale, you bring to the vendor’s website. Commissions can range from 15% to a high of 75%. Some affiliate programs pay you a fixed fee for every click through, or traffic you send to the vendor’s site. Programs like these often pay a smaller fee for every click through. The good thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor won’t have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to be compensated.
Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate program. Residual affiliate programs are usually based on membership sites, for instance, where the buyer pays monthly membership fees. Your commissions tend to be smaller, even if the vendor pays you 50%, because monthly membership fees are usually $10-$30. Many people ignore residual affiliate program and would rather opt for the high paying one-time commission affiliate program. Are these people making a mistake, or are they making the right decision?
When you look at a one-time commission, for example, that nets you $80, and compare that with, let’s say, a $10 residual commission, you might think … no comparison. Wait a minute. Take that $10 monthly commission over a year, that comes to $120. And multiply that even further, another year, and another.
The same effort of making a one-time sale, can bring substantially more income through residual income. So is it a mistake to promote products that pay residual commissions? Are residual affiliate programs worth promoting? Definitely yes, because you get more money from these types of affiliate programs in the long run! Would residual affiliate programs work best for you?
That is not for me to say. It is a personal preference, but with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore such programs.
