This blog has become a place where we can discuss things related to projects we are working on, sort-of spilling our experiences onto paper (or screen, more correctly). It’s a chance to learn and educate at the same time. We have written a couple of Internet marketing guides, which are available on the Work Media book store page, but we are nearing the launch of our first real book effort – the Yahoo! Search Marketing Manual 2007 (tentative title). We will be attempting to push the book out using an aggressive Internet marketing plan incorporating natural search, paid search, content, and an affiliate program.

The affiliate program thing is new to us. This is our first foray into the world of affiliate marketing, so we thought it might make for another interesting topic for a series of blog posts. So for the next few weeks, while we figure this thing out, we will be making occasional posts describing what we are learning about it. And so we will continue learning while educating at the same time.

A good place to start is answering the question: just what is an affiliate program?

Wikipedia.org defines an “affiliate program” as:

a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. Compensation or commission may be made based on a certain value for each Impession (CPM), click (Pay per click), registrant or new customer (Pay per lead) or (Cost Per Acquisition / CPA), sale (usually a percentage, Pay per sale or revenue share), or any combination of them.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing

There are lots of different kinds of affiliate programs, as the above definition shows. The kind that we are going to be looking at initially is paying a percentage of the net income earned on the sale of a downloadable product. This is what we will be doing with our new book.

We will likely be using the services of a company called Click Bank (http://www.clickbank.com). Click Bank describes itself as “the Internet’s premier retailer for digitally delivered products.” Basically, they make it possible for sellers of downloadable products to sell their products through the Click Bank network, using affiliates who are signed up with Click Bank. By becoming a Click Bank customer, we will expose our book to thousands of affiliates to sell on their own web sites. If greatly multiplies our selling ability.

I wish we had time to go into much greater detail about affiliate programs, but there is much work to be done, so we need to get to it. There is much more to tell, so come back often and we will tell you everything we learn.

For help setting up an affiliate program for your own web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.