Affiliate marketing isn’t a new thing by any means, nor is it exclusive to the world of internet commerce, you can be an affiliate no matter where you live.
That said, the idea really only hit its stride when the internet marketplace first began to open up. Now it is almost impossible to spend even a few minutes on the web without encountering affiliate marketing, whether you are aware of it or not. While the benefits to this kind of marketing are widely spread, most lie in the realm of the actual affiliate.
So What Is Affiliate Marketing Really All About?
So what is the whole idea behind this marketing strategy?
Well, the idea has to do with rewarding advertising partners for results rather than simply for displaying an ad. With traditional marketing, merchants must pay for their exposure no matter what the end result is.
Sales may go down, sales may go up, but the merchant or service provider must still pay. This is true for television, radio, billboards and just about everything else as well.
How Do You Get Paid?
With affiliate marketing, the payout is relative to the number of times an ad is viewed, the number of times an ad is clicked on or, as it is with most affiliate programs, the number of times an ad results in a sale of goods or services. Affiliates place advertisements on their site and encourage site visitors to follow the ad.
They also encourage visitors to buy something after doing so.
Does It Cost Any Money To Get Involved?
The third party companies that take place in affiliate marketing are the big winners in this scenery for many reasons. The first is that their role in the whole thing is quite simple. While they need to do a lot in order for things to work well, they don’t need to do a lot in order for it to work. In fact, just about anyone can sign up to be an affiliate with no cost and no trouble.
One of the great things for affiliates is that they end up getting to make money without actually having to have a product of their own that is what affiliate marketing really is. All they need to do is provide a portal (known as an affiliate link) to someone else’s online business and then encourage people to access that business by going through their portal.
At the end of the day though, all they are really doing is putting up web code; they don’t have customers, they don’t have merchandise, and they don’t have shipping to worry about.
All of that being said, those who make the big money as affiliates in this whole game really do invest a lot into it. They design systems web pages that work (landing pages), they write or have copy written for them that encourages visitors to click through to the merchant’s site, and intricate systems of getting visitors to their sites in the first place.
Still, the basic overhead needed to get into this field is quite low.
There are other types of affiliates as well, these are the ones this whole idea was created for, and are arguably just regular website owners or product vendors who have their own service or product or business to advertise. As an affiliate they can send their customers to other business who provide things that they do not, and in turn make substantial passive income from their own online business.
In all cases though, and if you are already involved in affiliate marketing you will be able to see for yourself that it is clearly taking off and changing the way the internet does business. As a result, it is changing the way consumers are reached by vendors due to the army of marketers involved with affiliate marketing.
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