How to make Money from Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing. It's a tricky concept to get your head around isn't it? It can be quite confusing but not to worry, that's why we're here. We want to help you out to make more money online, so you can better your results with Internet Marketing.

You may have stumbled upon the concept of Affiliate marketing by searching on the Internet for money making techniques or from The Marketing Guy. In this article we will show you how to use affiliate marketing and implement it into your website, email marketing or other sources and reap the rewards from it.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is basically when you are the middle man between the consumer and the advertiser and you receive a commission for recommending the consumer towards the advertisers' products. With the popularity of the Internet during the 1990's; search engines and e-commerce rose to prominence during the mid 90's and went from strength to strength from there. Website owners saw the gap and utilized the market. This way website owners do not need to sell an actual product that they own and therefore avoid overhead costs such as stock, warehouse costs, etc. Affiliate Marketing is one of the easiest ways to make money online as you do not have to deal with orders yourself and every order you do receive you receive a commission for it. It sounds great, doesn't it?

An Explanation of Affiliate Marketing.

 

There are many different types of Affiliate Marketing websites. Some examples of Affiliate Marketing websites you can use are:

• Comparison Shopping Sites (e.g. Confused.com, Go Compare, Compare the Market)
• Coupon sites that focus on Promotion (e.g. Groupon, Wowcher)
• Blogs (this website, My Four Hour Work Week)
• Niche Website or Review Website
• Email List Marketing 

When it comes to affiliate marketing the trick is not to spam people with your links. You know the comments you see on YouTube videos and blog comments that say ' I make millions of dollars a month and you can too, visit www.thisisascam.com '. Well also you won't be scamming anyone but you know the point I'm making.

How to get started with Affiliate Marketing

Getting started with Affiliate marketing is easier then it sounds. When you join a Affiliate program, you can choose the products that you want to advertise and sell, the affiliate program will provide you with a unique affiliate code that you use to target the traffic to the specific site. Many affiliate programs do all the work for you and provide you with all the links, banners, information and all other things you would need. All you have to do is copy the HTML code and paste it where you want it on your site. If your users click on that link, they will be redirected to the page where they can make the purchase. Once they have successfully purchase the product you receive a commission of the sale (could be anything from 10% - 75%).

There are different types of affiliate programs and schemes that you can join. The most popular programs work can operate in different types such as:

• Pay Per Click - This is when you get paid based on the number of people you have referred to the affiliates site, it does not matter if they buy the product or not.
• Pay Per Lead - You get paid once you get the user to sign up to the and provide the affiliate site with contact information.
• Pay Per Sale - You can paid a percentage of the price once the user has successfully purchased the product from the affiliate's site.

Getting Started

Sign up to affiliate marketing sites. Make sure they offer good products, have a wide variety of products to offer and that they pay on time. Some affiliate sites do not pay on time, do not make the mistake of signing up to programs that don't pay. Do your research. The best websites to sign up to are;

• Commission Junction - This is a great affiliate program to sign up for. This has many, many products and links that you can promote. It has so many that you will be spoilt for choice. Make sure you do not sign up too many affiliate programs because the key is to not overdo it. You will find many affiliate offers from the likes of Go Daddy, Bluehost, Hostgator and many more.
• Click Bank - An Affiliate program for selling information products. The company offers a connection between digital content creators (ebooks, online courses, etc.) and affiliate marketers. If done successfully you can make big money. Expect commissions of 30% - 70%.
• Share a Sale - Share a Sale is one of the most popular affiliate marketing networks out there. It is very simple and easy to use and also provides over 2,500 merchants to chose from. Share a Sale also provide you with sales and reports to let you know how you are doing.
• Amazon Associates -  Who hasn't heard of Amazon. The massive online retailer provides everything from books to fighting equipment. You can promote anything available on Amazon and receive up to 10% on each product you promote.
• oneNetworkDirect - oneNetworkDirect has an easy to use user interface along with a wide variety of products to chose from. It also provides users with the ability to track their sales in real time.
• LinkShare - LinkShare is owned by Rakuten, Inc the same people who own Kobo and Play.com . LinkShare is very user friendly and provides many merchants to chose from. The only downfall is the commissions are not as high as other affiliate programs.

Once you have signed up for the affiliate programs of your choice you can start advertising the affiliate products on your site. But that is not the only place you can place the affiliate links. You can advertise and promote these on many different sources such as; social networking pages like Facebook and Twitter, Email newsletter, eBooks that you have written, sidebar of your website and blogs. You do not have to limit it to one source. You can advertise it anywhere you want.

A good way of promoting content is by writing reviews. Reviews are a great way of letting people know what the product is like and let them know about all the benefits of them buying the product. Check out this example of a review.

Last Thoughts

Affiliate marketing is a very profitable source of income and can make a lot of money for you if implemented correctly. You can literally earn money while you are sleeping and this alone is an amazing feeling. However it is not as easy as people think and some effort and time is required. That said we highly recommend you to start affiliate marketing.

If you have any questions or suggestions then please post it in the comment box. If you enjoyed this article then please share it among your friends, family and dog.