I signed up for an affiliate program. Where do I find...

Thursday, 03 January 2008

  ...When I will be paid? ... How I will be paid?  ...What percentage I get? ...The payment threshold?

Don’t you wish all affiliate programs spelled out all the details clearly?  Unfortunately, this is usually not the case.  You usually have to do some digging to find out all the details of the affiliate program.  Here are some common places you can find the info:

• Here at affiliatesbydesign.com -  We try to find all the information for you and keep everything up to date; however, make sure you always check with the actual affiliate program for the latest details.
• Affiliate program FAQ
• "Terms of use" or "Agreement" document
• The main page of the affiliate program
• An automated email response once you sign up
• Sometimes the best way to get this missing info is to email the affiliate program admin directly

What are the different commission types?

Sunday, 30 December 2007

PPC - "Pay Per Click"

Affiliate gets paid when a visitor clicks on a link (text or graphic).  Google Adsense is a good example of a PPC program.  In the affiliate world, PPC is not very common anymore because of fraud and loss of money.  However, many of the PPC programs such as Google Adsense have improved their systems and lowered click fraud.  Google Adsense and related programs are a great way to increase your online revenue.

PPM - "Pay Per Mile"

Affiliate is paid when visitors view an ad.  Affiliate is paid regardless of whether the vistor clicks on the ad or not.  This is no longer a common method because of fraud and advertisers realizing to much of a loss from PPM programs.

PPS - "Pay Per Sale"

Affiliate is paid when a vistor purchases an item from the advertiser.  This is the most common method, and you will find that almost all the affiliate programs that you join are PPS.  PPS is very profitable for both the advertiser and affiliate (or publisher).

PPL - "Pay Per Lead"

Affiliate is paid when vistor completes a specified action on the advertisers website, such as fill out a form requesting more information, or downloading an ebook or registering for a newsletter.  PPL programs usually do not require that the vistor make any purchase on the website.

What does 2nd Tier mean?

Tuesday, 30 November 1999

Let's say you have affiliate program "A".  "A" pays 50% base commission, and 10% for second tier.  Let's assume now that someone has clicked on your affiliate link and signed up as an affiliate.  Now that person is your sub-affiliate.  Whenever someone purchases a product through your sub-affiliates link, the sub-affiliate get's paid 40% of the sale, and you would get 10%...

You must find out for each affiliate program to see how they determine this second percentage.  There are two basic ways that affiliate programs view this:

1) % of the sub-affiliate's commission -
So in our previsou example, you would not get 10% of the sale, but 10% of what your sub-affiliate is paid.  In other words, you would get 10% of 50% of the sale, which computes to 5% of the total sale (Base commission X 2nd tier commission = 2nd tier total percent of the sale) 

.50 X .10 =  .05

In this case the 2nd tier is not as valuable as it first seems. You are only getting 5% instead of 10% of the sale.
Here's another example of how low the percentage can get using this first interpretation of the 2nd tier:

10% base commission with 10% 2nd tier, $75 sale.  This sounds decent right?  Let's do the math:

.10 X .10 = .01   (or only 1% of the total sale)
.01 X $75 = $0.75

2) % of sub-affiliates sale -
This works out the way you would expect it to.

10% of base commission with 10% 2nd Tier, a sale of $75:

.10 X $75 = $7.5

The difference between $7.5 and $0.75 is very significant.

What is a cookie?

Sunday, 13 January 2008

The cookie monster would disagree with this definition, but here it goes:  A cookie is a small file that gets written to your hard drive when you visit a website.  This cookie is mainly used to "remember" things about you when you visit that website a second, third, and fourth times, and so on.  Sometimes cookies will track what you do on the site, so that when you return, the website knows what content is most relevant to you.

  How does a cookie concern me as an affiliate?

When someone clicks on your affiliate link and visits the website, most websites write a cookie to the visitor’s computer - this cookie will contain your affiliate id and some unique information about the visitor such as IP, or login.  Whenever that visitor returns to the website and purchases products, or signs up to be an affiliate themselves, the website knows to give you the credit.  (An IP is a unique number that identifies the user’s computer on the internet).

Now there are some problems with tracking by cookies and/or by IP's.  A person can set their browser to not allow cookies to be written.  Also, most people have IP's that change with time, known as "Dynamic" IPs.  This is not anything that these people try to do necessarily, but the cable / phone company often assigns its customers an IP at time of connection.  Luckily, most people will have the same IP for months at a time unless they are unplugging their modem, or if the cable / phone company is refreshing IP's.

The good thing about cookies is that most people don't even know how to turn them off if they wanted to.  And most of the people that do know how, don't turn cookies off either.  So generally you should expect to get credit for a sale.

Sometimes affiliate programs give the credit to the last person to send a visitor to their website, while others give credit to the first person to send a visitor their way.  This distinction needs to be made, because both you and I could send a visitor to a website, where the visitor purchases a product.  Who should get the commission?  You were the first, but I was the last.

To find out how the credit is given, you will probably have to email the affiliate program owners. 

What is Payment Threshold?

Saturday, 12 January 2008

 This is how much the affiliate has to earn before a payout is made.  Sometimes affiliate programs will allow you to set your payment threshold to whatever you want, but most programs will still have a minimum.