Affiliate Marketing with AdWords

The most obvious use for AdWords is the promotion of your own Web site or online business. But you can also promote sites such as eBay, Amazon.com, and other big e-commerce sites that pay individuals to send customers to them. When you advertise on behalf of one of these sites, you function as an affiliate. Affiliate advertising brings together several components:

• A company that wants to promote itself on the Internet and gain new clients or customers. The company decides to attract users by paying affiliates to function as an independent spokesperson for the advertiser.
• The search and content network. In this case, the network is Google. Its Ad-Words system is among the best-known paid advertising services.
• The affiliate. That’s you.
• An advertising network. A company like Commission Junction (http://www.cj.-com) or AffiliateFuel (http://www.affiliatefuel.com) monitors how many times people view an ad, click on it, and end up making a purchase or registering on the site. An advertising network also brings you lots of opportunitiesto join affiliate programs; they present you with lists of advertisers who are looking for affiliates, along with their payment schemes and payout rates. Ifyou sign up with an advertising network you don’t work with the advertisersdirectly; you work through the network instead.

The actual preparation of affiliate campaigns on AdWords is the same as advertising for your own business. But the additional requirement of signing up with an affiliate network is different. So is the way you get rewarded. When you advertise for yourself, you are rewarded with more visits and possibly increased business. When you advertise as an affiliate, you typically earn a fee only when someone performs the desired action on the advertiser’s Web site:
• By the purchase. You earn a fee only when someone clicks on your affiliate ad and ends up making a purchase on the advertiser’s Web site (for instance,Amazon.com).
• By the lead. You earn a fee only when someone registers for the first time to be an official member of the site (for instance, eBay).

Some sites pay you a commission when the person you send there registers there or downloads some software. In some cases you might earn a small fee every time someone clicks through from your ad to the advertiser’s Web site, but this sort of payment system is less common than the other two.