Benefits to joining an Affiliate Program
In the E-commerce Industry, companies are always looking for ways to increase their profits. If you focus on driving traffic to your site, statistics say your profits will increase. So, how do you drive more traffic to your site? One option would be to join an affiliate program. Affiliate programs are programs in which other businesses or consumers can promote a business’s website and be rewarded for driving traffic to the site. There are typically agreements in which an online merchant site pays affiliate sites or their own customers a commission to send them traffic. This agreement can vary. Sometimes it is based on the number of people that they send to the website, but other times it may be based on how many of those customers perform some action such as purchase a product. Joining an affiliate program is a great way to increase your profits. It is a cheap and effective way to not only increase sales but get your name out in front of more consumers.
In the 90’s, the CEO and founder of Amazon.com, made this strategy well known. Affiliate programs are great because it is a win-win situation for both parties involved. Once you have found an affiliate network that you would like to join, you will need to apply to become a member. After you have been accepted, most affiliate networks are completely free. After your application is accepted, the network will then guide you through the rest of the setup process. Affiliation is becoming an increasingly powerful online marketing tool, as more and more worldwide merchants are establishing affiliate programs.
There are many benefits to joining an affiliate program. Many companies operate an affiliate program that allows you to sign up for free. BMT Micro has a very robust program for our Vendors and there are no setup or additional fees. We will elaborate on more benefits of affiliate programs in the next few paragraphs.
The best benefit to joining an affiliate program is that your marketing partners will promote your site for free! You are turning other businesses and your customers into your Marketing team. You will not have to pay your affiliates until they generate a sale for you or send customers to your site, depending on your agreement with them. This is extremely helpful if you are an individual developer because this allows you to imitate having a sales force and marketing team that work on straight commission. All you need to do is recruit new affiliates and pay them when they generate a sale for you.
Even if visitors that are directed to your site don’t purchase anything, it is still increasing your overall traffic and potential to get visitors to recognize your name, sign up for your blog, or bookmark your site. The affiliates are driving a lot of traffic to your site which allows you to increase your exposure and brand recognition.
Another benefit of being an affiliate is that it is a very low risk opportunity to earn additional revenue for your business. You can let your affiliates market through their personal channels or their websites to see where they generate the most interest in your product. Viral Marketing is a method of promotion that gets customers to market a product or service by telling their friends about it, usually via social media or email. Using an affiliate program is a very powerful version of viral marketing. Affiliates can earn money for getting others to sign up under them. This encourages your affiliates to recruit more people. Thus, creating a viral marketing strategy with limitless growth potential. It is especially beneficial to have your customers market through their social media sites because people trust other consumers more than other businesses. Social Media also allows them to reach hundreds to thousands of people with a single post.
Lastly, having links to your site plays a role in your Search Engine ranking with major search engines. The more sites that point to your page the better it is for your ranking. Joining an affiliate program and getting your affiliates to link back to your site can have a positive impact on your Search Engine Optimization with little effort on your part.
BMT Micro encourages all of our vendors to participate in the BMT Micro Affiliate Program. This free service provides developers with additional channels to promote and distribute their product. There are no additional fees involved. You pay only the affiliates for this service. The developer control panel includes administrative tools that allow you to manage affiliate sign ups, percentages and view sales reports from your affiliates. BMT Micro also handles all your payments to your affiliates. There are many benefits to joining an affiliate network from reliable merchants and the more you utilize the affiliate network, the more profits you will see!
