MLM Directory

What Business Model is the Most Effective in the Affiliate Marketing?

I would like to know which of the following business models is the most effective in the affiliate marketing. My affiliate program gives me a choice of business models and I can choose only one. Loyalty/Rewards Select this option if your primary business model is based on loyalty or rewards. For example, your site offers points, donations, or other rewards for purchasing at selected merchants. Loyalty/Reward sites give something back to the consumer in exchange for purchasing through the publisher’s site. A percentage of the advertiser commission is used to pay a reward to the end user. Rewards come in many forms including cash, airline miles, credit card points, or a percent of sale given to an organization. Coupons/Deals Select this option if your primary business model is based on offering coupons and deals to your customers. General Shopping Select this option if your primary business model is shopping. Shopping sites can be thought of as a virtual mall. The consumer can shop for various products and brands without ever having to leave the site. This type of publisher is not focused specifically on coupons and deals. Search Select this option if your primary business model is based on search. Search publishers promote advertisers via search engine marketing (natural or paid). Price Comparison Select this option if your primary business model is based on price comparison. Comparison shopping sites sell items where some comparison is made before the purchase. Many times the publisher will have direct product links of the same product from different advertisers. Content/Niche Select this option if your primary business model is based on content, such as news stories, media, music, or video. Content sites focus on a specific area of interest. This type of site is normally not a shopping site but users go to the site because they are interested in relevant content on site. Content sites that do well with performance-based marketing blend their area of expertise with product recommendations. Social Shopping Select this option if your primary business model is based on social shopping. Social shopping sites usually combine shopping with user recommendations, reviews, lists, and other social network features. User Generated Select this option if your primary business model is based on user-generated content such as communities, forums, and social networks. Other Select this option if your primary business model does not fall under any of the other categories. Thanks

Public Comments

1. Essentially, the affiliate marketing business model is also known as the third-party proprietor. It is one of the easiest and most effective methods to get started and make money online. In a nutshell, an affiliate marketer promotes other people's products via referral and then gets paid a commission for their marketing efforts. This means that as an affiliate marketer, there's no hassle of having a product of your own, managing payment processors or even handling customer service support. How an affiliate marketer makes money online is simply by referring customers to the merchant's sales offer. Another benefit of affiliate marketing is that you can reap a significant share of the profit on each sale, with less than half of the hassle. By a significant share, it ranges anything between 5% all the way up to 75%! Affiliate marketing has also been growing in popularity in various industries in the recent years. The reason for this is because more and more business owners are realizing the power of affiliate marketing by leveraging on other people's marketing skills. On the affiliate marketing end, it is so easy because affiliates avoid the trouble on product creation and customer support. Yet as an affiliate, they still get to practice all the essential marketing skills that will bring successes into any business. The first thing you need to understand about affiliate marketing is that it is a "pay per action" model. Affiliate marketing works by having an arrangement between the merchant, also known as the product vendor, and the affiliate marketer. Only when an affiliate successfully sells a product or generates a lead, which is the action, then the merchant pays the affiliate a commission. In other words, the affiliate marketer gets compensated based on either the visitors they referred make a purchase or fill out a form by providing their contact information. The affiliate then gets rewarded with commission, which can range between 5 - 75% of the product price. This referral process works by using a unique link that allows tracking for both the merchant and the affiliate. Therefore, when an affiliate is doing their promotion, the sales will most definitely be accredited to the affiliate. The merchant on the other hand will notice which affiliate is performing well and in some cases, provide incentives or resources to assist in the affiliate marketing process. Lets look at the process flow of the affiliate marketing model. We begin with the affiliate marketer.Very simply an affiliate marketer visits an affiliate network to find a merchant and a product to promote.Some of the examples of affiliate networks out there are Commission Junction, PayDotCom, and Link Share. Basically, an affiliate network is a market place which brings affiliates and merchants together. The affiliate network company also handles all tracking and payment processes.When an affiliate identifies a product from the market place that could be profitable to promote, what the affiliate does is to set up a campaign and send targeted traffic to the merchant's sales offer. This targeted traffic will be the merchant's potential customers.Thereafter, when a sale or lead is successfully transacted, the merchant then pays the affiliate marketer the stipulated commission.
2. Most plans require you to have a web site to send your prospective buyers to. I found Pay Spree which allows you to post to opt in lists with a direct link to the sales page. No site required.
3. Content is your best bet if you can create it or have it created for you. Simply because with content you can distribute it in many different ways and formats and use it for multiple marketing purposes which will ultimately drive more and more traffic to your website and generate more and more sales for you :) You can take one piece of content and use it as an article, blog post, syndicate it, turn it into a press release and distribute it, podcast it, make it into a video for web 2.0 and social media sites, etc. If you want to have it created for you simply go to these sites to get it done for cheap: http://www.needanarticle.com http://www.fiverr.com http://www.elance.com http://www.guru.com Also, you can use the alternative option and use private label content. Just a search for "private label rights" or "PLR" on Yahoo! or Google.
4. Don't listen to these other idiots with their long drawn out answers! The most effective of all those you listed is Price Comparisons! Especially around the Holidays and I don't just mean Xmas and New Years. Believe me if you promote good price comparisons online you will make money naturally because people are always looking to save money by comparing other major stores and companies! The way you set yourself apart is by giving away a free gift card or coupon that nobody else offers just for your readers giving you their contact information. You want to build a list and then come out with your own shoppers guide or cheat sheet to getting the best price, package it into an ebook for $47 and email blast your list and make some serious coin.