Internet Based Affiliate Marketing -- Your FAQs Answered

If you are somewhat new to internet based affiliate marketing, here are some frequently asked questions to help you understand the business a little bit better.

Who is the Advertiser and who is the Publisher?

A merchant or retail store is an advertiser which has products or services it wants to advertise and sell via the Internet. The affiliate is the publisher who puts the advertiser’s links on their website to promote the products.

Do I Need a Website?

While a publisher can do some promotion solely with emails and newsletters, it’s advantageous in internet based affiliate marketing to have a website or blog.

What are Pay Per Sale and Pay Per Lead?

When a customer follows a link at an affiliate’s site to a merchant’s site and makes a purchase, this results in a commission for the affiliate and is known as pay per sale. The affiliate is only paid if the customer buys something. In pay per lead, the customer must perform an action, such as filling out a form for a free newsletter, signing up at a forum, or some other free activity. A lead pays a fraction of what a sale pays, but they are easier to generate and leads are more numerous than sales.

What are Cookies?

Cookies are little snippets of code that are placed on a visitor’s pc once they open a website in their browser window. Cookies are used for a variety of purposes but in terms of internet based affiliate marketing, they are used to place the affiliate ID code with the user’s machine. The cookie will expire in 30, 60 or 90 days, but if the user returns to the merchant’s site and makes a purchase, the cookie will track the sale and the affiliate will get credit, and his commission, on the sale.

What are Natural and Paid Searches?

If you hear the term natural search when talking about keyword search phrases, it refers to all unpaid search results which are ranked by relevance by the large engines such as Yahoo or Google. Paid searches are all pay-for-placement results which appear on the far right column of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in the “Sponsored Links.”

What is a Minimum Payout?

This is the threshold your earnings have to reach before the network will send you payment. The standard for the minimum is usually $25 or $50.

What is an Ad Creative?

Creatives can be graphic banners, landing pages, emails, or display ads. They have been designed by the merchant to promote their products and you are free to use them on your web pages and in your ad campaign.

What is Affiliate Spamming?

Partners who build a website that remembers the parent merchant website too much with either the layout and/or exact content are spamming. It’s a copyright infringement and should never be done in internet based affiliate marketing.

What are Terms of Service?

Each advertiser will restrict how partners can promote their product by issuing Terms of Service or TOS. You will not be allowed to copy pages of their website, or in any way misrepresent your site to look exactly like theirs. You can not use their brand name when doing PPC, and the TOS will often spell out certain competitive keywords they will not allow you to use in internet based affiliate marketing. If you violate an advertiser’s TOS you can be banned from the program or have payment withheld or both.

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