Why You Should Promote Residual Affiliate Programs - Are you a webmaster in need of additional income? Or are you planning to set up an online business but still need to get a sale? If so, affiliate marketing may be the best solution for your problems.
With affiliate marketing, you won't need to worry about the products you have to sell. All you need is a website with sufficient content related to the products of a certain online company offering affiliate programs.
By becoming a member of the program or an affiliate, you can start earning a certain amount of money right away!
Affiliate marketing is a business relationship between a merchant and his affiliates. In affiliate marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some traffic to a merchant's website.
If that traffic is converted into action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the merchant's website or becoming a lead for the company, the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated.
Compensation may be a percentage sales commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the affiliate's application to the merchant's affiliate program.
Promising a lot of benefits both for merchants and affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today.
Almost every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program anyone can join. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or program members by promising large commissions, lifetime commissions, click-through incomes, and many other benefits. But would all these affiliate programs bring the same benefits?
Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought to the merchant's website. Commissions for this affiliate program are usually large, ranging from 15% to 60%.
Other affiliate programs pay a fixed fee for every click-through or traffic you send to the merchant's site. Programs like this often pay a smaller fee for every click-through, usually only getting a maximum of half a dollar.
However, the good thing about this program is that the visitor won't have to purchase anything to compensate the affiliate.
Another type of affiliate program is the residual income affiliate program. Residual affiliate programs usually pay only a small percentage of sales commission for every sale directed by the affiliate to the merchant's site.
This commission often comes only in the 10% to 20% sales commission. Because of this, many people ignore residual affiliate programs 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?
We must determine if people are making mistakes by choosing a high-paying one-time commission affiliate program. But they are making a big mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs.
Residual affiliate programs pay at a lower rate. Still, merchants offering such programs generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions for a single affiliate-initiated sale!
That means, for the same effort you made in promoting a particular affiliate program, you get paid only once in a one-time commission program and a regular and ongoing commission for a residual program!
So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? Let's make them clearer with this example if they still need to be clarified.
Suppose two online merchants offer web hosting services on their sites. The first merchant offers a one-time commission type of affiliate program that pays $80 for every single affiliate-initiated sale.
The second merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time, it is a residual affiliate program that pays only $10 for every affiliate-initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may get attracted immediately to what the first merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely much larger than $10.
But by thinking things over before getting into them, one can see that the second merchant is offering us more opportunities to earn more money.
Suppose you have directed traffic to the merchant, which converted into a sale; you'll get paid once by the first merchant for the sale you initiated. But with the second merchant, you'll get paid monthly for as long as the customer you have referred to the merchant continues to avail of the web hosting service.
That means that for the same effort of getting one customer to avail of the merchant's service, you get paid monthly in residual affiliate programs. In contrast, you only get paid once in a one-time commission type of affiliate program.
So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting? Definitely, yes, because you virtually get more money from these types of affiliate programs in the long run! And would residual affiliate programs work best for you?
Probably not, probably yes. It is not really for me to tell. But with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it is unwise to ignore such programs.