Find a sponsor for your web site. Get paid for your great content. shareasale.com.

Features : Money : Making Money at Home

Build Your Home Business on a Shoestring

Part 1: Affiliate Partnerships - A Primer for Newbies and WAHMs

by Lee Hansen - About the Author

If you run a small business with an online storefront or virtual sales office, you can offer your customers quality name-brand products and services without purchasing inventory or investing in prohibitively high start up costs.

The secret to making money with your blog or web site? Partnering with established merchants and reliable online stores as an Affiliate.

In 1994, while finishing up a long-delayed marketing degree, I wrote a senior thesis predicting the emerging World Wide Web would evolve into a direct marketing channel with the power of broadcast media and the immediacy of a mouse click. Since then I've seen hundreds of get rich quick schemes emerge and fail in the Internet. I've also studied the growth of a successful business model that's in place today: Affiliate Marketing.

As an affiliate program member, I've partnered successfully with many merchants, large and small, for my own business web sites and for my clients' web sites. The programs I've researched offer third parties (you and me) business opportunities through affiliation, MLM, or limited franchise.

In my opinion, no-cost affiliate programs, text link ad services and professional niche banner exchanges are the best ways for a small business to partner with successful brand merchandisers and service providers to deliver traffic and sales to both parties, and to enhance the content on a web site or blog.

Why? There's no financial investment by the affiliate (you) or the merchant partner. It's a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate, particularly when merchants offer strong marketing tools and branding support combined with excellent customer service to the purchaser and prompt payment to the affiliate. You aren't under pressure to recruit other affiliates, nor do you need to meet sales quotas for most programs.

You manage your business and tune your marketing prorgrams to meet your own goals and match your customers' interests - you are the driver, not the merchant, as long as you follow the program rules for fair play.

How Affiliate Marketing Works

Affiliate program merchants compensate signed-up affiliate members for sending legitimate customers to their web site. Most merchants expect this traffic to generate sales; others are looking for prospects (to build interest and leads for their product, program, or campaign), or they are working toward brand development or awareness. Many programs offer multiple level affilate membership; that is, they encourage their affiliates to sign up sub-affiliates to their program.

Leads or sales originate through your web site or email campaigns to valid opt-in lists. And, best of all, the affiliate program manager or merchant is the one who keeps track of sales, clicks, payment and fulfillment to the customer. You manage your business for top performance, sales and service to your customers.

Affiliate Programs Overview

Obviously, the goods and services available through the affiliate programs you partner with should relate to your site and appeal to your site visitors' interests and buying habits. So how do you determine what type of programs will work best? It depends ...

First, let's examine the different types of affiliate programs to help you decide how to select the best program for your business.

Direct Merchant Programs Direct merchant programs are those that you establish with the existing brand, company or organization and that are managed by that business. Communications and compensation originate directly from the merchant's marketing division.

For example, ClubMom was formerly a direct merchant affiliate program. It has grown into a larger program and now offers CafeMom, a free social networking site for women. I offer the CafeMom program on my web site through links and banners, and if someone joins I earn a small commission as an affiliate of that program. If I decide not to promote the program, or if the program no longer needs to recruit with affiliates, I simply remove the banners and links from my pages. CafeMom affiliates join the program through an aggregate merchant program (in my case, that business is Commission Junction).

Aggregate Merchant Programs Aggregate merchant programs are larger than direct merchant programs, and they offer you more product choices than direct programs. Aggregate companies provide affiliate management services to many different businesses (who may or may not be competitors) from one affiliate account management interface. Aggregates generally offer you advanced tools for managing links, banners, ad rotators as well as act as a clearinghouse for approval of new affiliates and for general program updates. They handle all click-through accounting, fair-play surveillance, and payment to affiliate members.

Find a sponsor for your web site. Get paid for your great content. shareasale.com.

ShareASale and Commission Junction are both well-established affiliate program services who work with publishers and merchants. Their tools for promoting merchant products and services make it easy for you to customize advertising and specialized content for your web site or blog, and you receive a single commission payment monthly for all your participating programs are under their aggregate management business.

Cooperative Banner Programs Banner programs vary from simple swaps to carefully targeted exchanges with content controls to prevent display of your banner on inappropriate sites and on your site. Some programs include e-mail opt-in services and other marketing tools at low or no cost to member affiliates.

Storefront Programs Custom or branded storefronts are an easy way to offer your visitors a selection of quality products directly on your site, or from a link on your site to a specially branded coop site you manage with the assistance of the merchant partner.

These storefronts link to secure servers at the partner's site, so you can sell any of the merchant's products to your customers without having to invest in a full-featured e-commerce solution or worry about shipping, returns or other merchandising issues. To view samples of both types of storefronts, visit Pastiche Storefronts on this web site - click here.

Here are a few links to on-site storefronts I feature on this web site:

• Bachelorette and Bridal Shower party ware and sexy lingerie
• Printable Party Games - Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Christmas, Baby Showers and many other wonderful print and play games for all ages, all celebrations for home, classroom or office
• Baby's Boutique - natural products, baby gear, furnishings, accessories
• Toys and Games
• Mardi Gras Party Shop - Funky Costumes, Decorations, Beads, Masks!
• Seasonal Party Props and Decorations
• Pirate Party Games by Python - my personal favorite!

Selecting Affiliate Partners

There are thousands of affiliate and franchise programs available to individuals and businesses with a web site, blog or social community page who want to earn income and offer more of their own original content to visitors and readers.

You may even discover a product you want to sell directly, which can lead to an enhanced relationship with your supplier and your customers.

Part 2: Affiliate Programs - Risks and Issues, the second article in this series, discusses key business and technical issues that may impact your affiliate linking and sales results, and how to avoid problems such as tracking code hijackers, incomplete tracking, and affiliate partnership termination or revocation due to these issues.

Good luck, and get rolling with your affiliate programs!

Click here to read part 2 of this series.

© Copyright 2003 all rights reserved Lee Hansen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lee Hansen is a marketing communictions consultant who successfully combined parenting and a successful career before it was the norm. She founded Hansen Communications in 1981, a firm specializing in helping to grow and marketing small businesse.Lee owns Pastiche Family Portal - a parenting web site filled with articles and projects for caregivers, grandparents, moms, dads and kids too. She creates and publishes free clip art at www.leehansen.com and paper craft printables plus graphics at www.clipartandcrafts.com.

She is a regular blogger and author at HubPages and Zujava as well as other online communities for crafters, homemakers and educators.

Custom Search	Lee Hansen Tweet This!