If you own a webshop and would like to increase your sales, you might perhaps already heard of affiliate marketing.

It is probably the most simple way to spread the word about your product and increase your sales, in a far cheaper manner than ordinary advertising. Affiliates are individual persons (or companies) who place your ads, banners, links or other advertising material on their websites, via e-mail or any other method. Thus you reward them with commissions. You can pay per click, per sale, as a flat fee or percentage.

If you run a shop on a Joomla!-based site, and specifically by using VirtueMart - the most popular and well-developed shopping cart for Joomla!, affiliate advertising may become a lot easier than you think.

VM Affiliate is an affiliate marketing solution developed on top of the Joomla! and VirtueMart frameworks, designed to make all this process a lot easier and automatic.

The installation is very simple and fast. All you need to do is upload the VMA package and run the quick web-based installer. On the push of a button you have a full-featured affiliate system for VirtueMart at your service.

It integrates seamlessly with VirtueMart's administration area, functionality, look and feel. A new menu will appear called Affiliate Administration, where you gain control of your affiliate program. All you need to do is to configure it as you like by setting the proper commission rates that suit you, the lifetime of the referral cookie (how much time will the affiliate receive commissions from a customer he referred), and so on. After that, you're all set to go. Everything is automatic. VMA automatically detects and tracks which affiliate referred which customer, automatically checks if the order is successfully confirmed, and automatically assigns commissions. Rest assured you will only pay for real sales that were successfully completed.

Affiliates themselves have access to a frontend Joomla! component where they can see their achievements, get their HTML tracking codes for banners and ads, and so forth.

So, if you own a VirtueMart-based shop and would like to get a start on affiliate marketing, VM Affiliate will make this a breeze within minutes!