Why You Should Promote Residual Affiliate Programs

Are you a webmaster in need of additional income? Or are
you planning to set up an online business but you still
don't have any product to sell? If so, affiliate marketing
may be the best solution for your problems. With affiliate
marketing, you won't need to worry about the products you
have to sell. All you need to have is a website with
sufficient contents that are related to the products of a
certain online company offering affiliate programs. By
becoming a member of the program, or by becoming an
affiliate, you can start earning a certain amount of money
right away!

Affiliate marketing is some sort of business relationship
established between a merchant and his affiliates. In
affiliate marketing, an affiliate agrees to direct some
traffic to a merchant's website. If that traffic is
converted into some kind of action, like a visitor
purchasing a product on the merchant's website or a visitor
becoming a lea d for the company, the affiliate who directed
the traffic will be compensated. Compensation may take the
form of either a percentage sales commission for the sales
generated or a fixed fee predetermined upon the application
of the affiliate on the merchant's affiliate program.

Promising a lot of benefits both for the merchants and the
affiliates, affiliate marketing has become one of the most
popular online marketing methods today. In fact, almost
every merchant or retailer site today offers an affiliate
program that any one can join into. Most retailers would
entice people to become affiliates or members of their
program by promising great benefits like large commissions,
lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of
other benefits. But would all these affiliate programs
bring off the same benefits?

Most affiliate programs would pay you, as an affiliate, a
one-time commission for every sale or lea d you brought to
the merchant's website. Commissions for this kind of
affiliate programs are usually large, ranging from 15% to a
high of about 60%. Other affiliate programs would pay you a
fixed fee for every click through or traffic you send to the
merchant's site. Programs like this often pay a smaller fee
for every click through, usually not getting any larger than
half a dollar. The good thing about this kind of program,
however, is that the visitor won't have to purchase anything
in order for the affiliate to get compensated.

Another type of affiliate program is the residual income
affiliate program. Residual affiliate programs usually pay
only a small percentage of sales commission for every sale
directed by the affiliate to the merchant's site. This
commission often comes only in the range of 10% to 20% sales
commission. Because of this, many people ignore residual
affiliate program and would rather opt for the high paying
one-time commission affiliate program. Are these people
making a mistake, or are they making the right decision?

We can't tell, for sure, if people are making a mistake by
choosing a high paying one-time commission affiliate
program. But we can definitely say that they are making a
large mistake if they ignore residual affiliate programs.
Residual affiliate programs would indeed pay at a lower
rate, but merchants offering such kind of programs would
generally pay you regular and ongoing commissions for a
single affiliate initiated sale! That means, for the same
effort you ma de in promoting a particular affiliate program,
you get pai d only once in a one-time commission program, and
a regular and ongoing commission for a residual program!

So, are the benefits of promoting residual affiliate
programs clearer to you now? Or are they still vague? If
they are still vague, then let's make them a bit clearer
with this example.

Suppose there are two online merchants both offering web
hosting services on their sites. The first merchant offers
a one-time commission type of affiliate program that pays
$80 for every single affiliate initiated sale. The second
merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time a
residual affiliate program that pays only $10 for every
single affiliate initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may
get attracted at once at what the first merchant is
offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10. But
by thinking things over before actually getting into them,
one may be able to see that the second merchant is offering
us more opportunity to earn a larger amount of money.

Supposed you have directed traffic to the merchant and it
converted into a sale, you'll get paid once by the first
merchant for the sale you have initiated. But with the
second merchant, you'll get paid monthly for as long as the
customer you have referred to the merchant continues to
avail of the web hosting service. That means that for the
same effort of getting one customer to avail of the
merchant's service, you get paid monthly in residual
affiliate programs while you only get pai d once in a
one-time commission type of affiliate programs.

So, are residual affiliate programs worth promoting?
Definitely yes, because you virtually get more money from
these types of affiliate programs in the long run! And
would residual affiliate programs work best for you?
Probably not, probably yes. It is not really for me to
tell. But with the benefits that residual affiliate
marketing can provide, it would really be unwise to ignore
such programs.