If you are going to join an affiliate program you have to sign an affiliate service agreement with the merchant company whose products you are going to promote.
As an authorized affiliate of that company you have to abide by the terms and conditions written in that service agreement. Upon signing up with this agreement you are entitled to use the affiliate services of the merchant company.
The merchant websites offer several kinds of services which allow other websites to participate in their affiliate marketing programs. These services allow the affiliate members to join in the company’s revenue sharing arrangements. Here are some of the services offered by the merchant companies offering affiliate programs.
Link Placement is the first and foremost service included in an affiliate program. This service lets you place and remove links and banners on your site or in your email messages as and when you feel it necessary.
Next, service relates to the affiliate payment. In most of the cases, the affiliates receive a commission for every sale lead sent from the affiliate’s link. In most of the cases, payment of the commission is made automatically at regular intervals.
The affiliates also receive various kinds of support services. The merchant sites may contact you via email and let you know about any changes in the terms of services or any changes in the products. Necessary information can also be provided to the affiliates via newsletters.
The service stipulated in the agreement is designed to protect the advertising merchants from being duped by the dishonest affiliates.
As for instance, the service agreement of most of the companies prevent the affiliates from using the company’s banners and links in newsgroups, unsolicited email, banner networks, counters, chart-rooms’ or guestbook.
The affiliates are prevented from placing any link in a way that misleads the visitors and forces them in buying product from the merchant’s site. Thus the attempts at fake sales, leads, and clicks are curbed. The affiliate service is meant to keep surveillance on exactly what the affiliates are up to.
If you feel that your business can be benefited by an affiliate program but not feeling confident to build up a program on your own, you can contact a service that specializes in creating and managing affiliate programs.
These services keep track on sales and traffic generated by the affiliates. Then with the growth of affiliate programs it becomes increasingly impossible to tackle the details of the program. A dedicated service can solve this problem for you.
If an affiliate does not abide by the services, the affiliate website may be terminated from the program.
