Food & Lifestyle Blog: BettyHakes.com

When I tell people I am an affiliate marketer people usually nod their heads as if they know what this means, but I can see in their eyes… they haven’t a clue. I hope to enlighten and educate those who politely nod while they think I’m speaking greek!

Affiliate marketing is when a publisher, also known as content provider (i.e. bettyhakes.com; gourmetbetty.com) is paid when a lead or sale happens at the advertisers, also known as merchant, site (i.e. shareasale.com; vemma.com) from an end users (i.e. you the reader) that is redirected from the affiliates’ site.

Would you like to have hundreds or thousands of visitors bring traffic to your website and only pay on actual sales?
That’s every merchants dream, right? Well, you can have that if you set up an affiliate program.

There are several routes to choose from:

• ShareASale.com (affiliate network)
• Commission Junction (affiliate network)
• Buy.at (affiliate network)
• Infusionsoft (software product)

My suggestion would be to start on an affiliate network such as ShareASale.com. Right now, ShareASale.com is the best bang for your buck with only $550 set up fee versus Commission Junction which usually starts at around $3,000. Obviously there are other factors involved, Commission Junction does have a larger affiliate base and you do want to know where your competitors have a program. Both these networks have hundreds, if not thousands of affiliates signed up and much easier to recruit them directly. They have built in reporting features that are easy for you to keep track of your results. Both also have Pay Per Call programs (through Ringrevenue) that allows you to pay affiliates for calls into your call center.

So in summary, if you have a product or service that you sell and you’d like online marketing experts advertising for you, and only paying on a lead or sale, set up an affiliate program. Click on one of the links above to set it up and please tell them I sent you.

Full Disclosure: BettyHakes.com and GourmetBetty.com is an affiliate site (publisher), and is compensated if you purchase product some of the products or services listed above. These sales help support this site (not to mention my upcoming kids’ college tuition! :-0 )

I also work for a full-service marketing firm that manages merchants affiliate programs. If you are interested in learning more on how REV Media Marketing LLC can help you manage affiliate programs, please contact me directly.

Feel free to post any other questions you may have here!