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Why You Should Promote Residual Affiliate Programs

Written by: Greg Lietz

Article Overview: Affiliate Marketing is a wildly popular way to make a home based business income. But do you know how affiliate marketing really works and the different ways merchants pay your commission? In affiliate marketing, a merchant can offer a one-time payment program or a residual (recurring income) program to its affiliates. At first glance, you may think the one-time payment program is what you should promote all the time, but, after reading this article you may think otherwise.

Why You Should Promote Residual Affiliate Programs

Are you a home business webmaster in need of additional income? Or are you planning to set up an online home business but you still don't have any product to sell? If so, affiliate marketing may be the best solution for your problems. With affiliate marketing, you won't need to worry about having your own products to sell. All you need to have is a website with sufficient content that is related to the product of a particular online company offering an affiliate program. By becoming a member of the program, or by becoming an affiliate, you can start earning a specific amount of money right away!

Affiliate marketing is a sort of business relationship established 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 some kind of action, like a visitor purchasing a product on the merchant's website or a visitor becoming a lead for the company, the affiliate who directed the traffic will be compensated. Compensation may take the form of either a percentage sales commission for the sales generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the application of the affiliate on the merchant's affiliate program.

Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate program that any one can join into. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of other benefits. But would all these affiliate programs bring off 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 kind of affiliate programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a high of about 60%. Other affiliate programs would pay you 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 not getting any larger than half a dollar. The good thing about this kind of program, however, is that the visitor won't have to purchase anything in order for the affiliate to get compensated.

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 range of 10% to 20% sales commission. Because of this, many people ignore residual affiliate program 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?

Its hard to tell if people are making a mistake by choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate program versus a residual affiliate program. But it can definitely be said that they are making a large mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs would indeed pay at a lower rate, but merchants offering such programs would 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 would get paid only once in a one-time commission program, and you would get paid a regular and ongoing commission for the residual program!

So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate programs clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? If they are still vague, then let's make them a bit clearer with this example.

Suppose there are two online merchants both offering 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 a residual affiliate program that pays only $10 for every single affiliate initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10. But by thinking things over before actually getting into them, one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering us more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.

Suppose you have directed traffic to the merchant and it converted into a sale, you'll get paid once by the first merchant for the sale you have 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 while you only get paid once in a one-time commission type of affiliate programs.

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. Would residual affiliate programs work best for you? Maybe not, maybe yes. It is not really for one to tell. But with the benefits that residual affiliate marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore such programs.

Related Articles
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  Discover A Residual Income Affiliate Program
  Build Multiple Streams Of Residual Income Online
  Residual Income Affiliate Programs are the Ideal Work at Home Job
  Make a lot more money by choosing the right affiliate programs

Article Tags: affiliate marketing, affiliate program, affiliate programs, commission, sales commission



Related Forum Posts
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - Carol, Mary and David - thanks for your great input and insight on Affiliate Marketing! This is the kind of discussion I was hoping for in this thread. There are pros and cons to Affiliate Marketing, just as there are to any business. As has been suggested, he best policy is to proceed with caution and do some research before jumping in. As Carol has recommended, this topic thread in the EvanCarmichael.com forum is the ideal place to ask questions and seek further input on available Affiliate Marketing programs. If a person is serious about building an online business and is interested in Affiliate Marketing plans, they should approach the process as they would any other form of business. Research, ask questions, compare opportunities, participate in forums on online business and Affiliate Marketing. GT :-]
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - You made some very good points here Jeff and I agree with you, Affiliate Marketing should not be something that you concentrate all your efforts into. As i said earlier I have learned a lot with Affiliate Marketing and continue to do so, and it has helped me tremendously to understand what I am going to have to do in my chosen niche(s). I am also being coached by the same group of mentors as GT and we are all moving forward daily to achieve our ultimate goals. Take care, Carol
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - Hi GT Affiliate Marketing is one of the easier ways to get started making money online, but it does take quite a bit of work before you see any great results as you have to keep promoting constantly. It does teach you one hell of a lot about all aspects of Internet Marketing though as you will need to learn how to write and submit articles, create and maintain a blog, social networking is a great help to affiliates too..the list goes on and on. In fact from what you learn from Affiliate Marketing you can apply to any niche and be sure to succeed, take care, Carol
Re: What are your success criteria? - 1) Ability to provide for not only my family but their children and their children's children. I would setup education scholarships and also business venture grants to help the young kids in my family. 2) Residual income that is not dependent on my continual efforts 3) Quality time to spend growing the business as well as time to spend with family 4) Ability to create and fund an organization that empowers others to help those in need. The whole goal is when I leave everything should be able to sustain itself and continue without my help. That to me is success.
Any experience with McManus UK Ltd.? - Did anybody already deal with any of the McManus UK Ltd offshore entities? I do have a program, but not enough cash. I have been advised that they can fund investors with access to Private Placement Programs but they don’t want to joint venture with me. They want a fee for the service. This is why I want to find out if anybody has had first hand experience with this group? Patrick Ohara, Financial Consultant


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