Residual income - the holy grail of affiliate marketers

If you have a website, with decent traffic coming in and you are looking to add a few more dollars to your kitty, then you should certainly be looking at affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a contract with a Merchant, who has a product and an affiliate, who is willing to promote those products. All you need to do is to sign up, for the affiliate program and there you are ready, to earn those few dollars more.

You will be typically compensated, whenever a sale happens. The compensation is usually a percentage of the sale amount, but normally varies according to the affiliate program. The chances of making those sales typically depend, on the kind of traffic you attract and also on the kind of products, you have chosen to promote.

Affiliate programs are beneficial to both affiliates, as well as merchants. Most retailers would entice people to become affiliates or members of their program, by promising great benefits like large commissions, lifetime commissions, click through incomes and a lot of other benefits. Most of the affiliate programs would pay you, a one-time commission for every sale or lead you brought, to the merchant's website. Commissions range from 15% to about 60%. Other programs would pay a fixed fee, for every click through or traffic to the merchant's site. Programs like this often pay a small fee, for every click through. The only good thing about this is that, the customer doesn’t have to pay or buy anything for the affiliate to make money.

Affiliate marketing promises a lot of benefits for merchants, as well as affiliates and has become one of the most popular, online marketing methods. In fact, almost every merchant or retailer site today, offers an affiliate program that any one can join into.

But one type of program that stands out, that is called as the residual income affiliate program. This program pays around 10-20% of the sale price, as commission. But this program is usually ignored as pay per sale, offers more commission than this. But the catch with these kinds of programs is that, they pay that commission as long as the customer is with the merchant. That would mean once you refer the client to the merchant, not only does the merchant pay you for that one sale, but will also pay the same percentage even for subsequent sales. This despite the fact your effort were only for one sale. Isn’t that appealing?

While this program is slightly confusing, it sure is way of having long term revenue with little effort, apart from the initial one. Here is a perfect example of, 2 web hosting companies.

Suppose there are two online merchants, both offering web hosting services, on their sites. The first merchant offers a one-time commission type of affiliate program, that pays $80 for every single affiliate initiated sale. The second merchant also offers an affiliate program, but this time a residual affiliate program, that pays only $10 for every single affiliate initiated sale. As an affiliate, we may get attracted at once at what the first merchant is offering, as $80 is definitely a lot larger than $10. But the basic difference between the two is that, 80$ is a one time payment, while the second one who pays you 10$ will continue paying you monthly, as long as the customer is with him. So if the Customer is with the 2nd web host company, for a period of one year, the merchant would have to pay you 10$ every month and the total amount you earned is 120$, which is nearly 50% more than that offered by the first web host. Isn’t residual affiliate marketing a great program?

On the long run, it is these programs, which make you more money than other, affiliate programs. It is really worth promoting a residual affiliate program, as they pay you for a long time, based on you one time effort. It might work for you, but it might not work for someone. I am in no way a position, to tell if this is good or bad. But given the benefits that these programs offer, it certainly is not a wise decision, to ignore residual affiliate marketing programs.