Affiliate marketing is essentially a commission based incentive program where “affiliates” are paid for actions of their customers through an affiliate program.

The affiliate program is the gateway between the merchants and their affiliates allowing the affiliates to promote the merchants products or services.  In return the affiliates are paid a commission for their efforts.  Affiliate program are called many different names throughout the industry but they all provide the same thing…a way to make money!

There are several types of affiliate programs requiring different customer actions.  Here are a few examples:

1. PPS (Pay Per Sale) ~ This type of program requires the affiliate to successfully promote a product and create a sale to earn their commission.  Usually this is a fixed rate  or percentage of the total sale amount.

2. PPL (Pay Per Lead) ~ Also reffered to as Pay Per Action or Pay Per Signup, these programs pay an affiliate whenever a site visitor provides their contact information which then creates a “lead” for the merchant.

3. PPC (Pay Per Click) ~ Pay Per Click programs usually offer a fixed rate for each time a visitor clicks on one of your affiliate links and is then sent to the merchants site.

4. Pay Per Call ~ This program is very similar to the Pay Per Lead and Pay Per Click programs but instead the affiliate is gathering contact information for the merchants which will allow the merchant to call the potential customer.

Well it’s a pretty short post today but it gives you a breif overview of what affiliate marketing is and few of the programs available.

To Your Success,

Trevor