Revenue Share and Super Affiliates
Many affiliate programs set it up so that a higher revenue share is paid to the "super" affiliates. Basically, this means that affiliates who sell more are rewarded with a bigger percentage of each sale. This can be set up with multiple tiers to reward each progressive step up the chain with a higher percentage. This can also be done for specific time periods to encourage affiliates to make a big push and move inventory that needs to be moved.
*When you select affiliate management software make sure it is flexible enough to handle these set-ups if you think you may want a tiered solution at some point.
Revenue sharing agreements
Some revenue sharing agreements specifically either disallow or allow associates to bid on PPC advertisements using the merchant's name. Reviewing the agreements and terms of use is key.
Revenue sharing agreements can cover things such as:
? the use of graphics
? where and how to link to the merchant site
? content restrictions (such as adult or gambling sites)
? restriction of pop-up use
? restriction of the existence of trojans or viruses
? redirecting clicks
Know and understand your revenue sharing agreements.
Revenue Share in a Two-Tier System
In order to have two-tier affiliate revenue sharing, your affiliates need to have revenue sharing agreements with people who sign up from their web site. You would need to pay the 2nd tier affiliates the normal commission and the 1st tier (who initially signed up the 2nd tier) a small commission for each sale the 2nd tier affiliates make. This is basically multi-level marketing (MLM).
Strategically this method works because each affiliate has incentive to recruit more affiliates for you. The tracking is a bit more complicated than a straight-forward, single tier affiliate program but the benefits of this method can be profitable.
Revenue Sharing, SEM, and PPC
Revenue sharing content publishers should optimize their web site using standard SEM (Search Engine Marketing) guidelines to attract more "natural" search engine traffic. This could help them to elevate higher in the natural rankings.
They might want to buy PPC (pay per click) ads for certain key phrases. These ads show up as "sponsored links" on search engine results pages. The search engines charge a fee each time someone clicks on a PPC ad. SEM can take 3-6 months to have an impact on where your site shows up on the natural rankings. PPC is a quick, but more costly, way to get at the top.
Syndication and Revenue Sharing
Merchants can provide data feeds to partners of their revenue sharing programs. In addition, context oriented ads can be generated on the fly according to the page's content (so that ads can be updated more often with less effort).
Essentially, syndication provides an automated way of updating content, whether that content is an article or advertisements. Web sites become more dynamic this way, changing ads as content is updated. Publishers can send out content via RSS and XML and have it be updated in multiple places simultaneously.