Affiliate Marketing is an internet marketing method that allows websites to share traffic and revenue using banner and text ads. Online merchants who sell goods & services will pay commissions to registered and approved website owners (Affiliates) for sending traffic to their site.
Your sales will be 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 commission account. 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. Commission rates can be as low as 10% or as high as 75%!
The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing: -
Simple - it’s a great way to get your feet wet in a home business without spending a fortune or if you have a website and want to add extra products and revenue to your existing website, it's a great way to maximize 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 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 Marketing 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 Marketing 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.
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.
Starting to see why Affiliate Marketing can be so attractive? For sheer ease of starting an online business, 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>.
The Downside of Being An Affiliate:
The main problem with MOST (but not all) affiliate programs is that you will not build any residual income. You must always be marketing the product and looking for the next best seller.
There are a few exceptions to this rule however, such as membership sites, but many of them only pay on the first month or initial sign-up of the referred customer.
The Bottom Line:
Affiliate programs are a great way to take your first step, and learn about marketing online, the basics of running an online business etc. It's a good way to supplement your income and start building up your confidence in your ability to run an online business.
It's also good way to create those multiple streams of revenue and be able to quickly add to your portfolio of businesses whenever you see a great new product or you simply need to create some extra revenue!
