Craig Warren
http://www.YourHomeBizCoach.com/

How will refering new affiliates to an affiliate program make me
money in the future? Thats where a 2 tier affiliate program works
like magic!

Affiliates are getting cleverer by the day. So these days,
affiliates know the difference between the different types of
traffic they can get paid for. There are a lot of definitions
though – CPM, CPC, CPA, CPL, CPD and many more.

CPM is impressions, when the publisher (the website owner) gets
paid every time a banner is shown.

CPC is clicks, where the publisher (or email marketer and other
marketers) gets paid every time a banner or text link is clicked
upon.

The other ways of getting paid are grouped together under the
term performance marketing – and this is where the term affiliate
is most commonly used as well.

An affiliate is a marketer who sends visitors to another site
using a variety of methods (such as placing banners or text links
on their own site, buying sponsored listings on search engines,
email marketing and many other different methods) and gets paid
when an action happens. This action can be a lead (CPL stands for
Cost per Lead), a Sale (CPS stands for Cost per Sale), a download
(CPD stands for Cost per download) and many other variations.

Some in the Internet industry refer to performance based
marketing as CPA (cost per acquisition), although the term is
also sometimes used for specific types of campaigns such as leads
or sales.

Now that we’ve got over the hard part, the rest is easy to
understand.

The affiliate gets paid for sending visitors to a specific
landing page where an action happens – either a lead, a sale, a
download or some other sort of action that the advertiser
requires. As an example, some advertisers are looking to build up
their databases, so they pay for each opt in email address they
receive, others want leads from specific locations, so they pay
for zip codes, and then try convince the visitors after they fill
in their zip code, to fill in a more detailed lead form.

The common denominator is that the affiliate gets paid when an
action happens.

A 2 Tier affiliate program is simply finding new marketers to
sign up under you to do EXACTLY what you are doing – sending
visitors to different offers and getting paid when the visitors
perform some sort of action. So why would you want other marketers
to sign up under you to promote the same offers? Simple – you get
paid a percentage of the amount the affiliate you refer gets paid?
Sounds complicated?

Don’t worry, it’s not hard to understand. As an example, say
John promotes 5 different offers on a single affiliate network.
He gets paid for every lead, sale, email and zip code he generates
from these different offers. John now tells Mark about the Network
and gets Mark to sign up using a banner or text link that has
John’s referral code built into it. Mark now signs up to the
Affiliate Network under John and starts promoting various offers
and advertisers from the Affiliate Network. These offers DON’T
have to be the same offers that John is promoting. Mark can
promote ANY of the offers on the Affiliate Network.

And this is the best part…

For any amounts that Mark gets paid, John receives a percentage
of the amount over and above what Mark gets paid. So if Mark gets
paid $1000 in Month 1, and the 2 Tier Affiliate program is paying
5%, then John would receive $50 just for referring Mark.

But it gets even better…

Some 2 Tier Affiliate Networks pay LIFETIME commissions. So John
wouldn’t get a referral commission just for a month or a year –
he receives it FOR ALL TIME.

If Mark becomes a super affiliate and starts generating HUGE
commissions every month, John can just sit back and collect the
checks as he referred him.

There are 3 important things to know when finding affiliates to
sign up under you on 2 Tier Affiliate Programs:

Is the affiliate program or affiliate network credible, has
proper tracking so your referrals are correctly tracked, has good
campaigns and offers for the affiliates to promote so they
actually do make money, and do they pay timeously? Assuming that
the affiliate program or network is good, what percentage do they
pay you on amounts that your referrals get paid? All programs
vary so compare different programs to see what the industry
standard is.

How long do you continue receiving referral commissions for? Some
pay for a month, some for the lifetime, and of course there are
many variations in between.
 
So do your homework and find a 2 Tier program that can make you
money long in the future for the work you’re doing today.