» Types of Affiliate Programs

Types of Affiliate Programs

If you are going to make any money online, you will have to know about the different types of affiliate programs available. In general, there are 5 popular types of affiliate programs: pay per impression, pay per click, pay per action, pay per lead and pay per sale. Each one requires a different action from the visitor and they range from easiest (pay per impression) to the most difficult (pay per sale). Generally speaking, the more difficult an action is for the customer, the more you will get paid.

To illustrate this point, I have put together the following ghetto line diagram in photoshop:

Types of Affilate Programs

As more effort is needed for the affiliate’s visitor to generate an action (x-axis) the more the money that affiliate will be paid (y-axis). Now lets take a closer look at each of the types of affiliate programs.

Pay per impression

This is definitely the easiest way to generate some money from your site. This involves including a banner ad on your website, and each time a pageview is generated, you get paid. Now, it’s usually a very low payout for impressions as advertisers generally pay in the range of $0.01 - $0.50 per 1000 page views. So, unless your site has millions of impressions a month, you will not get paid a whole lot.

Popular pay per impression sites

Pay per click

Next up is pay per click. Much like pay per impression, you generally serve up ads on your website but instead you get paid when a visitor actually clicks on an ad that leads to the merchant website. You don’t need to sell anything, you get paid just for the click that takes the visitor to the merchant site. Since this requires a bit more effort for your visitor, pay per click ads generally pay in the $0.10 to $1.00 range (although there are some advertisers that are paying upwards of $35.00 per click!).

Popular pay per click sites:

Pay per action/lead

I’ve grouped these two together because they are often require similar visitor actions. Pay per action can mean a few things, such as sending your visitor to fill out an email form, download a file or install a toolbar. They can pay around $0.50 to $3.00 depending on whether the offer allows incentives or not.

Incentive offers mean you can tell your visitor to do that certain action and they will get something in return (such a free e-book for example). You have to make sure that the advertiser allows incentives for you to do this however. Incentive offers pay less due to the lower quality of the visitor lead.

Pay per lead is when the affiliate sends visitors to the merchant who then signs up for something. This is typically a short questionnaire which allows the merchant to then follow that customer up with an email or phone call. It can also enable the merchant to then sell those leads to another company.

While it’s still easier to generate a lead instead of a sale, a lot of visitors won’t go through the hassle of filling out forms and giving their email address. So you’re looking at usually $1 to $20 per lead, depending on the complexity of the forms to fill out.

Popular pay per action/lead sites:

Pay per sale

This is probably the most common. This is where the affiliate website sends the customer to a merchants website. That person then buys something. The merchant will then either pay a percentage of the amount paid, or a fixed amount per sale to you as the affiliate.

Since this involves having your visitor to actually purchase something on their credit card requiring the greatest effort it pays the best. Generally you’re looking at 10% - 75% of the sale price.

Popular pay per sale sites

It’s good to sign up for a few of these from each different category. This allows you to find the largest range of advertisers that will match your niche.

Related Articles:

Affiliate Marketing 101: An Intro to Affiliate Marketing

Filed under: Affiliate Marketing on December 8th, 2007

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