Affiliate Programs

The idea of an affiliate program is that a company encourages a developer to send traffic for their retail sales, and a minute commission fee is given out for sales rendered. As someone who has done a little work on the Web, I occasionally receive some profit with affiliate programs like Amazon. They are pretty easy to sign up for and set up, and it is somewhat possible to do this for Android.

I say “somewhat” because I looked around online, and it doesn’t appear that Android is set up well for affiliate programs. Like most users, I find that awfully strange. After all, Apple has an iTunes affiliate program that is different depending on your region. In the United States, it is Linkshare.

Unlike iOS, there really isn’t much in the way of an affiliate program for Android applications. I’m not certain why Google has not developed a more distinct affiliate program, but I have discovered this: AdMobix has made a recent announcement stating that it is allowing ads to be integrated into an Android application. The company recently released its mobile affiliate marketing platform and SDK for Android. This SDK allows advertisements to be integrated in the application between levels, pageloads, or anywhere on the page.

The AdMobix program has a per-install option that allows developers and advertisers gain additional users and only pay when their product is installed on the customers device, as opposed to the paying per view or click. other options include pay-per-call and pay-per-lead.

You can find out more information about this at AdMobix SDK for Android site at http://blog.adcommunal.net/admobix-sdk-for-android (see Figure 6-13). As of this writing, it is currently in beta.

Figure 6-13. A link to sign up for the beta version of AdMobix SDK for Android, an affiliate program for Android applications.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Android affiliate markets don’t grow more in the near future. If there is one thing that I have learned from business on the Internet, it is that someone usually makes a product if people whine for it enough.