Affiliate marketing has become a very popular advertising strategy for online retailers. Affiliate programs started springing up in the late 1990s. Amazon.com was one of the first, and is still one of the most popular affiliate programs.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
With affiliate marketing, you can earn a commission for simply sending traffic to a retailers site if any of your visitors make a purchase or perform certain actions.
Many times, you don’t even need your own website to become an affiliate marketer. By using PPC (pay per click), e-mail advertising or placing ads in ezines, you can get started quickly.
Website and blog owners who are affiliate marketers place ads and links on their sites which ideally will attract potential customers. Since the main job of the affiliate marketer is traffic generation, becoming educated on search engine optimization (SEO) and paid traffic alternatives is necessary.
There are a lot of different ways to earn commissions with affiliate marketing. You can earn a commission if one of your visitors makes a purchase. In some programs, you can get paid if one of your visitors requests more information or fills out a survey for example.
Another possibility is to place ads on your website or blog and earn a commission for each click through. Google Adwords is a good example of this.
Affiliate Marketing for Dummies?
Affiliate marketing is an extremely attractive way to earn extra income since it is free to join most affiliate programs and costs are very low to get started. In spite of this, it is estimated that the vast majority of those who start affiliate marketing end up not earning any money.
The reasons for this are many – the difficulties involved in generating enough web traffic as well as the learning curve involved in gaining all the necessary new skills.
Just because it’s a low-cost venture to start doesn’t mean that it’s easy to succeed in affiliate marketing. There are many new skills to learn along with a new vocabulary. Those who do succeed stay with the effort long-term and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way.
Information from a few high-quality affiliate marketing sources will always be more valuable than meaningless advice from dozens of irrelevant books or sites. You must spend time working on it, taking the risk that it may never be profitable.
Be aware that reading too many books could be considered a stalling tactic. Eventually, you have to get your nose out of the books, apply a few of the tips you like best and get started.
Affiliate Marketing Networks
You can give yourself a better chance of success by aligning yourself with high quality affiliate marketing networks. There are many networks out there that provide a variety of options that are a good match for you and your blog or website.
The thing about choosing a good affiliate network is that you’re not going to need all of them. In fact, some marketers have reached 7 and 8 figure incomes with only 1 network and they never run out of things to promote.
In looking for the best affiliate marketing programs, look for programs that have a long cookie life or lifetime commissions. This will give you a better chance of earning revenue from the traffic you generate.
It’s also important that affiliates are provided with high converting ads and landing pages. If a company you’re considering does not have these things, keep searching.
Several of the most popular affiliate marketing programs, networks and directories include…
Commission Junction – The commissions here are wildly varying, but with easy acceptance and some decent products to choose from it can be a good place to spend some time promoting.
Clickbank.com – It’s no secret that every discussion about affiliate marketing seems to start and end with Clickbank. Which is great for a lot of people, but some feel it short-changes a lot of newcomers who either don’t have success with Clickbank right away or simply don’t see any products on that network that they want to promote.
Linkshare.com – Linkshare has super simple acceptance and top notch tracking of hops and conversions. The commission rates are, unfortunately, lower than other networks though, because merchants pay for the right to use the service.
Markethealth.com – For those interested in physical products in the health and wellbeing niches with better payouts than other physical goods sites, this is a good place to get started. Acceptance is quick and easy as well.
Share a Sale – This is a slightly smaller option than Commission Junction, but is growing fast and has generally better commissions than most other sites. It is also fairly simple to join up with, so the time investment is small.
Associateprograms.com – This is a very respected resource for everything related to affiliate programs and affiliate marketing. Spend some time looking around the site and be sure to subscribe to their newsletter.
Of course there are many more good affiliate marketing programs, networks and directories – this is just a small sample.
