How do Affiliate programmes work?

We've had quite a few enquiries this month from people wanting to get their website exposed a lot more on the Net, at the lowest cost possible.

Well, affiliate marketing could be a good solution to those of you who need to do this.  So how does it work?  Well there many affiliate programmes around which provide the interface between businesses who ant to increase their websites exposure on the Net, and those who are willing to be paid to help with that promotion.

What happens is you sign up to an affiliate programme, through their website and set up an account. This consists of registering your contact information of course which is usually free.  You then have the opportunity to load up into your account a number of banners or text ads which other website owners are able to download and place on their website.  You also assign to your campign the amount of money you are willing to pay the affiliate for placing your banner on their website, and this is usually in the form of a commission on sales through the website or a fixed fee for an enquiry.  The afifliate managers handle all of that side of things for you, in terms of tracking where your traffic comes from, and who should be paid.

Its a great way of getting exposure to your website up, and targetting leads from other websites through to your own.  The other good thing is that you usually have full management of your account in terms of changing comissions, changing banners and ads, and also vetting who places your ad on their website.  You usually have the option to approve the placement of banners, so you can get real relevancy from your banners, and also avoid banner placement on websites of little value.

As always, be careful about who you use when you do affiliate marketing: avoid anyone who appears to be a link farm or is associated with a "bad neighbourhood".  We are able to asisst with affiliate advertisng, please let us know if we can help.