If it can be sold online, then there’s probably an affiliate payment plan designed for it. Besides commodity products, there are seminars, credit cards, merchant accounts, marketing programs, advertising—even real estate—sold through affiliate programs today. And although there’s very little that can’t be sold or acquired through an affiliate program, there are some basic rules to keep in mind when designing an affiliate payment plan.
Compensation plans are as varied as affiliate programs themselves. They range from a 15% commission on some Amazon books, to 1% on Dell PCs. On the financial services side, LendingTree (www.lendingtree.com) offers up to $14 per qualified application and NextCard (www.nextcard.com) offers $20 per enrolled card-holder. Consumer retailers such as FogDog (www.fogdog.com) offer a fairly typical 5%.
So when marketing a product or service through an affiliate program, you must think about the type of affiliate payment model that best fits what you are selling. Every affiliate payment model does not work with every product or service. Some models work better than others do. For instance, does your product or service lend itself more to paying for each sale or does it have a long sales cycle more suited to paying affiliates for sales leads?
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