FAQ
Affiliate Marketing FAQ’s
Q. What Are Affiliate Programs?
A. An affiliate program is a commission based program setup by an organisation who sells products or services online. It allows people like you or me to sign up as an affiliate and sell the products or services of that company to my customers and receive a commission on each sale.
Q. How Do I Become An Affiliate?
A. There are two possible ways an affiliate program will be managed – either it will be done in-house by the business themselves, or more commonly a third party affiliate network will manage the program.
In the case of the affiliate networks, you will create an account with them and once inside the member’s area you will have access to the affiliate programs of all the businesses that use that particular network.
You choose the business you want to promote and you are assigned an affiliate link that has a unique tacking code. When any of your customers click this link they are directed to the businesses website and you will receive a commission on any sales that result.
If you act as an affiliate for more than one business your commissions will be consolidated and made in one payment from the affiliate network.
Q. Which Types Of Businesses Have An Affiliate Program?
A. There is really no limit to the type of business that has an affiliate program. They could be selling anything from software, to physical products or digital books. They could be a one person business or a multi-national corporation.
Q. How Much Does It Cost To Join An Affiliate Network or Program?
A. Nothing – you are going to be generating additional sales for these companies so it is not in their interest to charge you to join their affiliate program.
Q. What Qualifications Does An Affiliate Need?
A.There are no special qualifications required, however some businesses may manually approve or deny your application to join their program. This will be the case where they are looking for a particular type of affiliate whether it be in how they send traffic to the website, or their country of operation.
They may also deny your application if they feel your website or business is not relevant to what they are selling.
Q. How Large Are The Commissions?
These will vary depending on what you are selling. The commissions will generally be less than 10% on physical products but as high as 75% on digital products. These percentages can vary depending on how successful you are – businesses are usually happy to reward their best affiliates with larger commission percentages.
Q. How Often Do I Receive My Commissions?
A. Many of the networks will pay you once a month, usually around the middle of the month. A digital marketplace like Clickbank will pay affiliates once a fortnight.
Q. Do You Need Your Own Operational Website?
A. You will usually be able to register even if your site is not yet up and running, but you should at least have the URL registered and have an associated email address created for that domain.
Q. What Is EPC?
A. This stands for ‘Earnings Per Click’ and is actually a statistic that is used to measure the average amount you would get paid for every hundred clicks on your link. It allows you to compare how well each of the programs is converting leads into sales and what commissions are being earned.
Q. Do I Need To Be A Computer Genius To Get Started?
A. Not really – it will help if you know the basics of html so that you don’t make any mistakes when using your affiliate links. If you get these wrong then you don’t get paid. Knowing a bit of html will also help you use the promotional materials the programs have for you to use such as banner ads.
If you don’t have these skills they are fairly easy to learn, or alternatively you can have someone else take care of the tech stuff for you.
Q. Do You Need To Live In The U.S?
A. No – affiliates can come from anywhere.
Q. I Have More Than One Website – Should I Create More Than One Account?
A. You will be able to register multiple websites in the one account with the majority of networks so this won’t be a problem for you. It will actually make it easier for you because your commissions from each of these websites will be included in the one payment.
