An associate program is an online marketing method used by a lot of small and large scale electronic businesses to generate additional sales. The method involves making a deal with another web site whose content is often related to that of the main merchant’s website. Simply put, the associate web site posts advertisments for the merchant web site, and also offers it’s readers links to the merchant website. For each person who purchases items from the merchant via the associate link, the associate gets a commission. From this simple system, associate marketing has grown rapidly to become larger and more elaborate so that today, entire books are written revolving around creating and operating successful associate programs. Here are 7 basic criteria that both merchants and potential publishers should take into consideration when choosing or designing an associate program.
Compensation System – there are different types of compensation, and associate programs often use more than one in combination when making a package to offer to their merchants. The smallest and simplest types get paid a small, fixed amount every time a viewer from the associate page...