Affiliate marketing benefits everyone involved. It’s almost amazing what a perfect exchange the whole arrangement represents. The merchant or affiliate program steps up and develops a product and membership system, they design promotional web pages for use by their affiliates, provide customer support and accounting for both the affiliate and the affiliate’s referrals, and pay commissions to boot! What the merchant gets is that with the help of his affiliates, he will produce sales without spending a lot of money for advertising and promotion.
It seems entirely appropriate that the program charge a reasonable membership fee and that each time the affiliate refers a visitor to the website, the merchant will earn income. Of course the affiliate will earn money for the referral without having invested much. The commission may not seem huge, but the point is when you have not had to invest a lot of time and money into product development, etc., it is easier to realize a profit.
With the goal always being to earn as much money as possible, both the affiliate and the merchant should be considering the practice of back end selling in their business. Back-End selling is a very productive mechanism and the truth is it can even represent the majority of the profit made from the sale. Back-End selling is the ‘optional’ offer that is proposed either at the tail end or after the initial sale. This might be, a ‘Wait, don’t go! There is More!’ message – even a ‘P.S.’ to offer something maybe with the premise that because you bought A we are offering you a special deal for B if you take advantage of it right now. Continue Reading →
