Affiliate marketers start out sifting through the many affiliate programs and direct merchants to join in a bid to earn money online.
This can be quite a daunting task for the new affiliate.
The questions arise, 'should I join affiliate programs?', or 'should I join direct merchants?', or 'should I do both?'.
Joining affiliate programs can be regarded as a good move in that you're able to join with the one program but join bulk merchants, promote products and merchants, and receive one big payment each month, if you've put in the hard work for it.
Joining direct merchants can be time consuming.
First of all, you have to search which merchants you would like to join and then complete individual applications to these merchants.
However, many direct merchants offer lifetime or recurring cookies, as well as commissions for sub affiliates, and 2nd tier commission payments.
These affiliate commission structures can come in quite handy for an affiliate marketer.
Affiliate lifetime commissions, or residual commissions, as they are also known, are usually received by subscriptions and memberships where you can rely on affiliate commissions being received as long as the member is subscribed to the particular service.
Why earn affiliate commission from one customer for one products, when you can earn affiliate commission for a lifetime? There's no comparison.
Other affiliate merchants offer lifetime cookies which never expire.
This means if a prospective customer visits your site, clicks on your link, and buys something in 2 years time, you still get paid for it.
Many cookies through affiliate programs expire after 30 days, some even less, so affiliate tracking and cookie expiration is definitely something an affiliate marketer should research before signing up for an affiliate program.