What is Affiliate Marketing?

There are 10,000′s of companies on the Internet that are willing to pay a performance-based commission if you can drive sales to their websites by promoting their products and services. To do this you join the “affiliate programs” run by these companies. While there are several ways to make money online, affiliate marketing is one of the most direct and often easiest to get started in.

Your job as an “affiliate” is to be the middleman between online consumers and merchant’ products. By aligning consumers with the products they are looking for, you get a commission for every sale from the merchant through an Affiliate Program, which is one of the best ways in to how to earn money online.

Internet Based Affiliate Marketing is a great opportunity to earn money online as well as have the freedom of owning your own business and working at home with next to nothing in start up costs.

The opportunities are endless but let me warn you, affiliate marketing is NOT a “get rich quick scheme.” When I first started to educate myself in the field of Affiliate Marketing I ran across endless information and high costing ebooks that were really nothing but hype, with promises of overnight riches and getting paid big money to enter data, some of which turned out to be how-to’s on using Google Adwords, that in reality is hardly a job entering data. It is important to realize that there is so much free information on how to do Affiliate Marketing that paying money for it is really unnecessary.

Don’t get caught up in these dishonest claims out there with slogans like “get rich overnite” or “make money while you sleep” No such “magic” exists. In reality, Affiliate Marketing takes hard work! Dedication + Hard Work = Success! Success in Affiliate Marketing is VERY possible but not without hard work!

If you are wondering if the Internet has become too competitive or if there is no room left to earn money online, rest at ease. There are countless viable opportunities for affiliate marketing, and while certain niche areas are quite competitive there are many that are not. Everyday there are millions of new users joining the World Wide Web and there are plenty of untapped niches available where money is waiting to be earned.

Another aspect of this is the fact that not all websites are built alike. While competing with the big guns may be difficult, thousands of smaller websites see big success, like websites built with Os Commerce templates because they are able to fill specific needs with unique content. And if you use the correct strategies, techniques and tools to build affiliate websites success is not only possible but very probable.

One example I can give you is to look at it this way, have you ever landed on a website and you had absolutely no idea what was going on there, whatever was promised in the original search results description was somehow lost with over convoluted design, too many adds and absolutely no clarity. These kind of sites are numerous and it is very easy to beat these in your marketing efforts. There are several specific website building techniques that are described in this blog, as well as marketing tools that will help you crush competing sites within your subject matter.

Some of the advantages of starting an affiliate business is all that is required is a computer, an internet connection, motivation and hard work. This is probably the only business in which you do not need thousands of dollars in start up costs. You can develop this business on your own time and work around your day jobs, with the end goal of course of telling your boss to shove it once your business becomes successful!

The concept of affiliate marketing is simple.

There are literally thousands of merchants out there with various products and services, and when you, as an affiliate send people to these via a link from your own website to a merchant’s site and they perform the required action, such as a purchase, a registration or a download, you, the affiliate make a commission.

The basic ways that affiliates are paid when they send their visitors to a merchant’s website.
1. Pay Per sale – Visitor buys something from the advertiser.
2. Pay Per Lead – The visitor completes a lead form.
3. Pay Per Action – The visitor installs, or uses a product or a service.
4. Pay Per Click – The visitor clicks on a link through the affiliate website and enters the merchant’s website. (Google Ad Sense is one example)

Each of the above types of commissions vary from merchant to merchant.

Nutshell of Affiliate Marketing:

Visitor visits Affiliate Website + Clicks on a Link + Visitor goes to Merchant’s Website + Visitor performs respective action = Commission is recorded for affiliate = Affiliate Makes Money Online!

You can learn the step-by-step process of building an Affiliate Marketing Website at: Building an Affiliate Marketing Website – Step-by-Step