In theory, affiliate marketing programs, also known as affiliate networks, are pretty straight forward. All they do is give a third party network which enables affiliates and merchants to come together and find each other. Merchants and affiliates would then sign onto the affiliate network, find each other, join together, and begin to work together in promoting each others products and services. This is a pretty simplistic explanation of affiliate marketing programs.
But in reality, there are a lot of variations, especially when it comes to affiliate programs. So what are some of the variations? Below is a list of some of the more common variations:
The most popular type of affiliate marketing programs is pay-per-performance. In this type of arrangement, merchants send out emails or send out text messages about their affiliate partners. Typically, merchants only have one affiliate per month.
The next type of affiliate programs is pay-per-sale. In this arrangement, an affiliate is only paid for actual sales that were made. What’s nice about pay-per-sale affiliate marketing programs is that you only pay for actual sales; so even if you don’t get any sales, you don’t have to pay anything. However, not all online businesses are eligible for pay-per-sale affiliate marketing programs.
One of the biggest variations of affiliate marketing programs is to offer e-commerce sites. With this type of arrangement, you are essentially creating an online store that sells products of another company. The two companies can be as different as Apple and Microsoft or they can be similar but in different ways. For example, Amazon and eBay have very different payment methods.
The other type of affiliate marketing program is the affiliate marketing program with a commission junction site. This basically means that you are getting paid a percentage of the revenue that comes off of the sale of an item that you promote. Commission junction has become very popular over the last several years because most merchants and ecommerce sites are now paying commissions on sales. You are essentially getting paid to advertise something that is already being sold by another merchant. Commission junction allows merchants to advertise their products and you pay a fee for each successful ad that you place.
Rakuten is probably one of the best affiliate programs on the internet today. They have been in business for over 15 years and continue to grow by offering the best affiliate programs around. Rakuten will compensate you by both earning you a commission for each sale and loading you up with residual income offers. These can include things like a monthly book that you can download that will only cost you $2. That is just the cost to get the book so far, you will also get commissions from the people who buy that book after you have downloaded it. What you will find is that the more you promote Rakuten the more you will earn.
The next time you look at an affiliate marketing program and see something that says rakuten affiliate marketing program you may want to look again. It could be a middle man. Middle men can make commissions that even the top affiliates would never dream of having. Some middle men will charge as much as 10% of the sale price. So when looking at a Rakuten affiliate marketing program keep this in mind. You don’t want to get ripped off by a middle man that wants to take a cut of your earnings.
Another thing to watch out for when going for the no cost, no risk affiliate programs is the con that is being purported. The con that they are saying about the clickbank affiliate program is that you cannot make any sales without having a website. While that is true you can make sales without having a website. That is part of the reason that the no cost, no risk program exists. The point is that the people who are promoting the no cost, no risk affiliate programs are selling their products and services for free.
If you have heard about eBay and the auctions that go on there then you have heard of affiliate programs. These affiliate programs are run by merchants who have sites on eBay. When you sign up with these merchants you get the chance to sell their products for a percentage of the price that they are sold for. What many people do is they set up auctions on ebay and then they do all the advertising for the merchants until they get some sales.
The only cons that I see with the Rakuten affiliate program and the no cost, no risk affiliate marketing programs are the fact that you may not build a customer list fast. This is a con that I have personally experienced. You will have to put in some time building the list. Another con is the fact that you are not allowed to post links to the merchants affiliate products. This con may be worth it to some but not to others. In the end it is up to you how you want to make your money.