What is Affiliate Marketing?
A Basic Overview...

Affiliate marketing is an internet marketing method that allows websites to share traffic and revenue using banner and text advertisements. Online merchants who sell goods and services pay commissions to registered and approved website owners (Affiliates) for sending traffic to their site.

Government Grants for Women - Click Here!
Free Government Grant Money For Women Only! Grant money for Business, Education, and Personal Needs! Apply Today!

Your sales are tracked through your own unique Affiliate ID that is encoded in a special link or URL. These special codes can be used in a variety of ways, from banner ads to embedded text ads. Visitors that arrive through your special link to the Merchant’s site are tracked and all sales from these visitors are credited to your Affiliate commissionaccount. The length of time that you are paid on each visitor's sales varies from a single visit to “lifetime”, depending on the individual Merchant policy.

Commissions or revenues are earned by Affiliates through a variety of methods that fall under these basic categories:

Cost Per Sale (CPS or CPA)
A visitor referred by the Affiliate purchases goods and services from the Merchant. This payment structure is referred to as - cost-per-sale or cost per acquisition (cpa). This is currently the most common payment method used today, and provides the most cost effective results for the merchant.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)
A visitor referred by the Affiliate completes a form on the Merchant’s website. This is payment structure is referred to as - cost per lead (CPL). This is most common in programs for insurance and mortgage companies, or high end items such as automobiles, or high-end cruises, seminars, etc.

Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM)
A visitor to the Affiliate’s website clicks on a Merchant’s banner and visits the Merchants website. CPC pays for each click & visit, while the CPM pays on a per thousand basis for the display of the banner, not on the actual click through to the site. Although these were very popular forms in the early days of online marketing, they have not proven to deliver the best results for the merchant in today’s competitive market.

So for the Merchant online - a well run Affiliate marketing program provides an excellent method of advertising across thousands of websites, while only paying a commission for the actual sales made.

Why Become An Affiliate?

Simple - it’s a great way to get your feet wet in online marketing without spending a fortune or to add extra products and revenue to your existing website, and maximizing your marketing efforts to your existing customer base.

Here are some of the benefits of becoming an Affiliate:
   • Low or No Cost Set-up
  • No Product Costs
  • No Inventory
  • No Fees to Join or Licenses to Buy & No Monthly Minimums to Meet
  • A Product or Service for Virtually Every Conceivable Market Niche
  • No Sales Experience Required
  • No Employees
  • No Merchant Account Needed
  • No Order Processing or Product Shipping
  • Little or No Direct Customer Service Involved
  • 24/7 Business – You Earn Money While You Work, Play or Sleep!
  • Unlimited Territory!
  • Income Potential Limited Only by Your Personal Marketing Efforts

Could you make more money selling a product that you developed yourself? Probably, but unless you have some experience with running a business already you might want to start out with an Affiliate program. By promoting an existing product you will keep both your site development costs and your ongoing overhead to a minimum while you learn the ropes of marketing and getting traffic to your site. By working with an Affiliate program, you will be able to take advantage of their sales tools and experience start generating some income while you are learning.

With an affiliate program, you don’t have the headaches of getting a merchant account or dealing with unhappy or even fraudulent customers - this all falls under the responsibility of the merchant. And with the wide variety of Affiliate programs available, if you already have a web site - it is very easy to find products or services that will complement your existing business. If you don’t have your own business yet - but it is your ultimate goal to have one eventually - then choose programs that will appeal to the target market you want to cultivate.

One strong word of advice here - most Affiliate programs will give you a sales page or website for the product (called a replicated site). This is a great way to get your website live quickly - but I strongly encourage you to pay the small fee to get your OWN domain name. Your own domain name gives you instant credibility as a serious business person - and, when you really stop to think about this logically - how can you honestly ask a customer to spend money for the product you are promoting if you do not believe it enough to invest a few dollars into the business yourself??

There is one truly wonderful advantage to Affiliate Marketing that few people ever really stop to think about - but it is a big one! Simply put - if you don't like the results that you are getting with one product, you can quickly dump it and substitute another one. If you are creative enough - and generic enough! - with your domain name - it will be something that is enticing enough to bring in traffic but not necessarily tied to a specific product! By doing this, you can easily & successfully switch products without having to interrupt or change any of your outstanding ads or promotional campaigns. Clever, huh??

Starting to see why Affiliate Marketing can be so attractive? For sheer ease of starting an online buiness, and with a lot less money than a full blown website with lots of content and goodies....you can quickly be online with products and websites - leaving you to devote yourself to the more important things...like marketing and figuring out what on earth Google is up to this week <sigh>.

Now that you have an idea as to what Affiliate Marketing is....I can hear your next question already.....

Related Articles

To Apply for the Amber Grant - Click Here!