Income-Based Marketing Versus Revenue Sharing and Commission-Based Compensation Methods

Affiliate marketing has been around as long as the internet itself. The first generation of affiliate marketers mastered the art of article writing and link building to bring visitors to online merchants and services.

Over the past few years, other ways of bringing visitors to online merchants have surfaced, most notably search engine optimization (SEO). Search engine optimization (SEO) is a technique that uses keywords and phrases, sometimes stock images or videos in your website content to attract visitors. Once a visitor conducts a search using your keywords, your site will be high on the list. You can get more visitors by using SEO strategies in conjunction with affiliate internet marketing.

Affiliate marketing remains a solid way to promote products or services. In fact, it is growing as an advertising and marketing tool, with its broad range of offerings including pay per click (PPC) and pay per lead (PLL). Affiliates earn a commission when they refer customers to another merchant. They can also receive commissions for referring other affiliate marketers to the merchant. Some of these marketers use social media marketing (SMM) to spread the word about their product or service.

The affiliate marketing system provides advertisers with a simple method for engaging in mutually beneficial advertising programs with a large number of affiliates. The process is usually initiated by merchants who are seeking to take advantage of the cost savings that can be achieved through affiliates marketing. The advertisers supply the resources such as web hosting and content management to the affiliate marketers, who in turn provide a host of advertising tools such as banners, text ads, email marketing, and social media marketing.

One of the main advantages of affiliate marketing over other revenue-sharing models is the opportunity to target a significantly broader customer base. Because advertisers are typically looking for a certain demographic to whom they can market their product or service, affiliate marketing provides them with a significantly larger customer base. This allows them to reach more potential customers than they would achieve through other revenue-sharing models. Another advantage is that affiliate marketing allows advertisers to test different campaigns to determine whether they are effective. Because most programs offer a generous commission, advertisers can usually afford to experiment with different styles or formats to determine which form works best.

There are several differences between affiliate marketing and traditional publishers. In order to attract affiliates, publishers require specific author and ownership rights for web content. The authors have the ability to control the resource that the publisher uses, so long as those rights do not infringe upon the copyrights of other third parties. Affiliates generally need to purchase their own membership to the affiliate management portal, but since it does not cost the publisher any money, there is no cost to the affiliate and little risk of losing revenue.

There are several benefits to affiliate marketing. First, affiliates can help drive direct traffic to the publisher’s website. When an affiliate refers a visitor to the publisher’s site through his or her own promotion, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals the affiliate makes, the larger the commission the affiliate earns, and the larger the site traffic the affiliate drives. The number of associates driving a site to success is called a network and is the number at which the publisher earns his or her money.

Another form of affiliate marketing is revenue sharing. Revenue sharing is a revenue-sharing plan that involves an affiliate marketing team that distributes the revenue earned by each member based on the performance of that member. For example, if one affiliate generates ten sales for the month, that affiliate will share two percent of those sales-that means ten dollars in earnings to the affiliate manager. If the same affiliate earns twenty sales in a month, the affiliate manager will receive fifty dollars. Again, this is an incentive based on performance and does not have a minimum or maximum dollar amount of earnings.

There are many other income-generating methods used in affiliate marketing, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. Affiliates who are serious about making money and building a large downline in the process should educate themselves on the best revenue sharing, commission-based, or cost per action (CPA) programs for their specific purposes. Then they should build their skills and knowledge base in those areas so they can choose the most effective revenue-sharing, commission-based, or cost-per-action (CPA) program for their unique situation. When they are ready to select a system, they should be able to read testimonials and select the most appropriate method for their particular needs.