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Why Two-Tier Affiliate Programs are Best
by: John Lynch

When you join an affiliate program or start an affiliate program of your own, you have to decide whether it will be a single tier or two-tier affiliate program.

With a single tier program you earn a commission on any sales you make and that is it. If you are running your own affiliate program, you pay your affiliates a commission for any sales they refer and that is all.

However, with a two-tier program, affiliates are allowed to recruit sub-affiliates and are paid a small percentage of the sales these sub-affiliates generate. For example, the affiliates may earn a 30% commission for selling product X himself; and when one of the sub-affiliates makes a sale, the affiliate may get a 10% commission as well. This is very profitable for the affiliate as he can recruit an army of sub-affiliates, all earning commissions for him without any effort on his part except for the initial recruiting process.

If you are starting an affiliate program of your own should it be two-tier or single tier? Some might shy away from the seeming expense of a two-tier program. But is it really that expensive? Many affiliate program managers make the wrong decision on this.

Let’s look at an example. You have an affiliate program up and running and an average affiliate joins your program. Mr.Average has a web site that receives average traffic. He also has an ezine with thousands of subscribers published monthly. Mr. Average posts your affiliate links to his web site and promotes your product to his ezine list.

Initially, he generates good sales. However, a point comes when he saturates his market with your product and his sales begin to drop. He begins to lose interest in your program and your sales remain small. What happens if you set up a two-tier program? Rather than trying to keep your commission pay outs small, you motivate your existing affiliates to recruit other people to your program. This will exponentially increase your affiliate sales. Would it not be worth paying the referring affiliate a percentage of their sub-affiliates’ sales? Now when Mr.Average joins your affiliate program this is what would happen. When he has saturated his market with your product, he would now promote your affiliate program to his customers and ezine subscribers. Many of Mr.Average’s customers and subscribers decide to join the affiliate program. This in turn will motivate Mr.Average to continue promoting your products and recruiting affiliates.

Now what is the situation?

1) Your income increases because of increased sales.
2) You have a much larger customer base to which you can sell ‘backend’ products.
3) An increase in your income because of the life time loyalty of the customers referred by your affiliate.
4) An army of sub-affiliates who will sell your products, and in turn promote your affiliate program to their customers and subscribers.

The little extra in affiliate sales commission pay outs will be more than compensated for by the exponential sales increase. This is why the two-tier affiliate program is a guaranteed winner and should be the automatic choice for potential affiliates and affiliate program managers.
© John Lynch
For details of two-tier Affiliate Programs go to: merchant-account-service.com/affiliate_programs.html )
Source: www.isnare.com

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A podcast feed is a way of sharing files over the internet. It involves the use of a small, machine readable file that is regularily updated to reflect changes in the files available for downloading. The internet addresses of these files are embedded into the feed file and can be automatically downloaded when wished. At this time, podcasting tends to refer to the use of feeds to share only media files. Podcasting originally occured as a way to share audio mp3 files, and has only recently begun incorporating video into podcasts. However, the technology that allows the files to be shared is not limited to such media files and there is not reason that other files may be shared via podcast in the future.

Today, however, a podcast feed tends to refer to the use of a feed to share media files. Most podcasts are done with audio files, and the individual files that are created and shared are called episodes. These audio files may contain a variety of things; there are music, comedy, news, technology, even podcasts about wine.  Podcasting, because of the low entry cost, especially for audio podcasting allows nearly anyone who believes they have something to say to broadcast it over the internet. Even more established groups have found that audio podcasting works well. Some radio stations podcast portions of their content, sharing it over the internet to allow listeners who missed a specific show to catch up on it later. NPR now does this with its news breaks, and the NPR show “This American Life” offers a podcast of its shows to subscribers who pay a small fee.

One of the newer innovations in podcast feeds is the vlog, or videoblog. These blogs usually contain a feed that distributes a video, rather than an audio file to feed subscribers. Although that would not have been feasible a few years ago, growing numbers of broadband internet subscribers has meant that most users are able to download large files, even video files, relatively quickly. These video podcasts have been readily accepted by mainstream news organizations. They have found that podcasting portions of their content is a way to share their tape and reach a wider audience. The BBC currently does this with parts of its news content. Pieces of the news show that is played over the airwaves is taken and placed online, along with a link to the content placed inside the RSS feed. Those who subscribe to the BBC feed can download the news clip and watch in from the comfort of their home computer.

In the future, podcast feeds may be used for a number of purposes besides simply sharing media files. Some analysts predict that the feed system could also be used to share software updates, or any of a myriad of other file types. For now, however, podcasting is dominated by small audio and video files.   

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