What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?
The principle of affiliate marketing is really very simple; you basically advertise and promote someone else’s product.
The question you are no doubt asking is, why would anyone want to promote a product for someone else? The simple answer to that is you do not have to create your own product or have to deal with dissatisfied customers. The process of product creation and dealing with customers is left entirely to the product owner.
How do affiliates get paid? The answer is that the product owner rewards each affiliate a percentage of each sale that the affiliate makes for him. This percentage can vary, but for information products, affiliates can earn up to as much as 75% commission on products.
The product owner knows which affiliate has made each sale by means of each affiliate’s unique affiliate link. When someone clicks on your unique affiliate link and buys the product, you, the affiliate are credited with the sale.
The beauty of affiliate marketing is that affiliates can make money without all the hassle of creating products and dealing with unsatisfied customers. Both the product owner and the affiliate profit from the arrangement, the affiliate by promoting the product, making sales and getting paid, and the product owner who does not have to do anything in terms of promoting and advertising their product.
To give you an example, I am an affiliate for one particular product called The Super Affiliate Handbook. This is an information product that explains how the author, Rosalind Gardner, earns over $435,000 per year … selling other people’s stuff online and guides you through the entire process of building an affiliate marketing business on the internet. For each sale that I make, I get 50% of the sale. The cost of the product is $47. I therefore make about $23.50 every time that I sell Rosalind’s information product.
Many affiliate product programs are run by Affiliate Program Providers (APPs). APP’s basically act as middlemen between the product owner and the affiliate. Two such reputable APP companies are Clickbank and Commission Junction. Clickbank deals only with information products while Commission Junction deals with both physical products as well as information ones.
One major advantage of dealing with APPs is that if you are acting as an affiliate for several different product programs that the APP runs, your commission payments are consolidated into one regular check. Some APPs can even transfer commissions straight into the affiliate’s bank account. In other words, the affiliate does not have to deal with each individual affiliate program in order to make sure that he gets paid. Not only that, but the affiliate does not need to get involved in keeping track of what each individual program owes them.
Affiliate marketing has grown enormously in popularity over recent years with many affiliates making considerable sums of money by this means. And all of this without the headaches of dealing with their own products and customers.
Another advantage of affiliate marketing is that you can start it part-time alongside your current day job. Many affiliates however, have become very successful and are making a full time living from it.
A word of warning though. As with anything worth getting in life, if you want to be successful, you have to be prepared to put in the time, be dedicated and above all patience. The end results can be well worth the effort.
Donald Cash has a detailed knowledge of Affiliate Marketing. If you would like to make money online and want more information on home businesses that really work, visit his website at http://www.moneymakingreviews4u.com/
Author: Donald Cash
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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