Join The Flow: Participating As An Affiliate

They may not all be making money from their efforts (Declan Dunn muses that "80% of revenue comes from 20% of the affiliates") but they are experimenting with an amazing variety of approaches in driving customers to their e-merchant partners.

For every way that an affiliate program provides incentive for revenue-sharing, site owners find a thousands ways to leverage revenue from their audience. Some of the types of affiliates (and the strategies they are exploring) include:

* Online publishers -- Website publishers who model themselves after the magazine publishing metaphor (or who really are print magazines with Websites) were some of the earliest adopters of affiliate programs as supplemental advertising. In many cases, publishers focused on the "advertising model" are experimenting with banner bar placements that earn commissions on sales, rather than a fee-per-display. Weve had some successes with this model ourselves -- in some cases, generating more income than we would have charged on a per-CPM basis. While Amazon.com "Book Stores" have become cliche on the Web, clever publishers are exploring more topic-specific and product-specific tie-ins. If youre already reviewing products (from computers to travel reservations), why not lead your reader directly to a commission-paying vendor?

* E-Zine publishers -- Turning those long affiliate-program links into shorter ones suited for publication in an email newsletter is fairly easy (see < http://www.revenews.com/shortlinks.cgi > for an example) and e-zine publishers are making use of the same affiliate programs targeted at Website owners. Many affiliate program managers report that direct opt-in email is one of the best money-making techniques an affiliate can use for generating commission. This technique would work just as well for magazine, newspaper and newsletter publishers with a high percentage of readers on-line.

* Web entrepreneurs -- If youve found a great affiliate program but dont have a Website that draws that audience, why not develop new content to attract those customers? Appealing primarily to the "Web entrepreneurs," many individuals have tailored new Websites to draw the audience their affiliate program partners are looking for. Small free services, content and "malls" (with a range of effectiveness) are springing up across the Web, inspired by the potential of revenue-sharing.

* E-merchants -- Other e-commerce sites and e-merchants are finding the "affiliate program" model to be a natural extension of the revenue-sharing partnerships they have been making with each other since long before the Web burst on the scene. Complimentary products and services can be recommended (and the referal compensated for) and existing strategic relationships strengthened with online commitments. E-merchants with affiliate programs are even experimenting with "trading affiliate programs" with related but non-competing sites (where each e-merchant signs up for and promotes the other through their existing affiliate programs) -- a "cross-promotion" with a chance for dollar signs on the back-end.

* Traffic funnels -- Couple a little ingenuity with some basic online promotional skills and you have even more unusual affiliate tactics. For example, there are individuals registering new domains, promoting it to an effective position in the search engines to attract attention, then re-directing that incoming traffic directly through an affiliate-commission link to a more familiar e-merchant. Some are even taking a further short-cut -- registering domain names similar to well-known e-merchants (such as misspellings) and re-directing the traffic on (through an affiliate link, of course) to the actual e-merchant. With affiliate programs, if you can generate "attention" it can be converted to revenue.

There are really two common elements in all of these approaches: attracting an audience (and as large of one as you can) and finding the product and approach (one that attracts the right kind customers for a particular program.) Not every Website will make money from every program -- but given the right promotional techniques, money could be made from any program.

About the Author

Brian Clark provides the latest scoop on revenue-sharing and affiliate programs as the producer of http://www.revenews.com


bclark@gmdstudios.com
http://www.revenews.com