we provide insight into the main affiliate program partnership models. These programs have different forms and any product or service offered on the Internet is good to sell through an affiliate network of partners. It extends your product’s reach, increases visibility and produces additional revenue for your business.

It is important while choosing the most appropriate type that whatever affiliate model you use, it must be content-centric to succeed. This means offering visitors products which closely match the content of the site itself. In other words present the right message in the right place at the right time.

Program models

 Actually you can affiliate with websites in two ways. First, by placing offers on affiliate sites that link back to your company servers and second, via hybrid affiliate models. If you place content the process will be as follows: affiliates’ sites will link back to your company servers directing their traffic for the sale fulfillment. Here are other methods as well.

 Six hybrid program models for your affiliate program:

   1. Banner or Text Links
   2. Storefronts
   3. Pop-Ups
   4. Imbedded Commerce
   5. E-mail
   6. Two-tier Programs 

Banner or text link

 Using this model you can affiliate with your partners by placing a small banner, image or text link on their websites. They will send visitors to your site in their turn when a banner or link is clicked.

Mostly a banner should contain the name of a company and promotional text. The text helps immensely as a compelling reason to click the banner. It is also advisable to use a banner and a text description - especially a testimonial - on an affiliate’s site to increase the chance of a sale.

 Here we’d like to recall some ways that compensation can be made as there are revenue models using banners that don’t depend on commissions. Instead of paying a commission on products or services that were sold, you can offer websites a CPC (cost-per-click) affiliate program. In this method, websites earn revenue every time one of their visitors clicks through to your website. This method is especially useful for driving traffic to your site.

 Another model is CPA (cost-per-action). With CPA programs, affiliates earn a commission every time one of their visitors clicks-through to your site and performs a task, such as filling out a survey form or entering a contest on your site. No sales are made, but your company can build up a list of prospects that you can market to in the future.

 Generally, paying only for performance shifts much of the advertising risk from the merchants to the affiliates, although merchants still assume some risk of fraud from partner sites.

To sum up, banners are not limited to products from one side but this form of affiliate partnership is not very beneficial from an affiliate’s point of view, because visitors leave their sites after clicking. That’s why affiliate websites like cost-per-click and cost-per-action programs much more than banners.

Storefronts

The attractiveness of a storefront partnership model is that affiliates have the ability to offer some kind of store on their own Web pages and not direct visitors to a merchant’s site. A promise to revitalize the sales commission has made this model of partnership increase in popularity.

 Using a storefront model site owners create a complete online store that looks like it resides on their websites. Predictably, affiliates are paid commissions on each sale generated through the storefronts. There are special companies providing Web server space and design templates to client websites to set up shops for this particular partnership model. Storefront companies sell no products themselves but offer the merchandise of many different merchants to their affiliate partners. In other words they work between the merchant and the affiliate - working for affiliate sites, not the merchants.

According to Forrester Research, “Building a Web storefront costs between $2 million and $40 million dollars, with another $2 million to almost $50 million in recurring costs. This is why storefront affiliate programs are so attractive to websites wanting to e-commerce-enable their sites.”

 Pop-Ups

 This model looks like a small banner or icon. When visitors click on it instead of being directed to another site they’ll be shown a small pop up window which provides information on the merchant’s products. Although pop-ups look like banners at first sight, they differ in not having visitors leave the affiliate site after a link is clicked. Visitors will be returned to the original page which appears in the background after a pop-up window closes.

 In the pop-up model there is not much space for a merchant’s offer due to its small size. Pop ups, however, certainly deserve your attention along  with the storefronts model as beneficial forms for keeping visitors at an affiliate’s site.

 Imbedded Commerce - Boutiques

Imbedded commerce-like storefronts are possible with programs that provide special pages designed for affiliates. Embedded commerce, however, is a more sophisticated form of a context-centric affiliate program which enables partners to carry a portion of a merchant’s product line. This approach builds specific “boutiques” for niche-market affiliates.

Affiliates can run their site with embedded merchant applications instead of just offering a link.
Embedded commerce also helps to keep visitors at an affiliate’s site and does not send them elsewhere and away for good.

E-mail

 Many merchants with affiliate programs think only about website activities. But websites aren’t the only place to conduct an affiliate program. Websites that don’t provide enough traffic and sales should also consider e-mail.

 Evidence shows that e-mail affiliate programs have emerged as a significant player in the industry. Even clients without a website can participate in an affiliate program by adding a link to their e-mail.

If you’re interested in this partnership model your actions will likely be similar to the following: if somebody is ready to participate in your program provide them with a text link for the signature field of their e-mail. An e-mail signature is defined as an option allowing for a brief message to be imbedded at the end of every e-mail that a person sends.

Therefore, prepare your program so that when a partner person signs up to your program they get a small piece of code which automatically inserts a promotion at the bottom of an e-mail message. The next step is to quickly send and distribute your offer. Both parties are happy with this arrangement as the sender gets commissions when someone clicks through to a merchant’s website and buys a product.

 An e-mail partnership model has other advantages as well. For example,  after clicking your link clients can be offered different tasks to be fulfilled. There may be used offers for discounts or special deals on a product or service, surveys and free offers where their e-mail address can be captured and then marketed to at some later date. Additionally, most text links can be enhanced with images for better results.

It is also very possible to integrate an interactive application with e-mail. This tool demonstrates the viral nature of an e-mail affiliate program. The definition of the viral marketing is as follows:

 Viral marketing is the rapid adoption of a product or passing on of an offer to friends and family through word-of-mouth (or word-of-email) networks. It is any advertising that propa­gates itself the way viruses do.

 The core of viral e-mail marketing is made up of individuals acting as affiliates promoting a merchant’s product or service offers. So why not let individuals accessorize their e-mails with advertising messages too - and get paid for it! You’ll see that an e-mail affiliate program is a powerful marketing device that can very quickly spread a merchant’s offer across the Internet. Viral e-mail affiliate programs offer an easy entry for merchants wanting to promote products and services via e-mail while still maintaining the pay-for-performance benefits of affiliate marketing.

 Two-Tier Programs

This approach offers affiliates an opportunity to also recruit affiliates. Using a two-tier partnership program you get affiliates joining your network which in turn recruits other websites under them to sell your product. Commissions are paid for each sale that the second-tier affiliates make under the master affiliate. It is advisable to expand your reach over the Internet with a two-tier program which can let your affiliate program grow very quickly.

Of course, nothing good ever came easily and the two-tier model has its disadvantages as you can lose control of your affiliate program or have problems in communicating with second-tier affiliates. In order to protect your reputation don’t allow first-tier affiliates to expand their second tier thru spam tactics. An antispam policy such as personal approval of any second-tier affiliate or dealing with the offending marketers after the fact should be used.

Two-tier programs also demand more attention as this model can cause  partners to spend more energy signing up second-tier affiliates as a means to generate revenue instead of promoting the product.

At first glance this model of partnership is great for promoting your products or services, but don’t be deluded as the effort, time and money spent dealing with problems could be better spent rewarding existing affiliates.

 Now you understand how important it is to have a suitable partnership model that satisfies your purposes and affiliate interests. Actually all of depicted models represent the different ways in which your business can generate revenue, get leads and acquire new customers.