Affiliate marketing is actually a form of online marketing except you don’t own the product or service you are given a commission for your efforts when a sale is made.
It is a marketing practice that is based on the use of online websites to sell products that can either be delivered electronically or with the larger affiliate networks home delivered. Simply stated, the step by step methods of the whole affiliate marketing process happens starting from the point a customer visits your affiliate website.
Affiliate marketing requires you to promote and sell other people’s products or services and you will receive a percentage of the purchase price known as a commission. In reality, a third-party or the affiliate marketing manager as such that does all the pre-selling for the product or service that you are affiliated with.
The vendor relies on you and your efforts to find consumers and make them aware of the product or service, usually by landing pages or reviews and then your affiliate link will direct them to the vendors site.
This is one of the reasons this has become so popular is you don’t hold any products or supply the service and you don’t even provide customer support for the product you just receive a commission if a sale is made through your affiliate link.
Webmasters who get involved as a means to earning big money need to understand a few concepts first.
- This is not a business where you can make huge amounts of cash by building a one page website and sitting back to count your money.
- You need to understand different ways to advertise such as link building, article marketing and of course some methods of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and to take it to a higher level e-mail marketing, display advertising, paid links and so on if you need to know a few more affiliate tips have a look at our Promoting Money Sites post.
However many affiliates, those that are after a fast dollar and have no consideration for consequences tend to use methods that are less conventional known as “black hat” marketing which we will not discuss in this post but you just need to be aware that it can be dangerous to your online business efforts.
Another tactic that is also tarnishing many trusted affiliates are product review sites were they give a glowing review of how good a product is then splatter it with their affiliate links and hope to make a killing.
If you want to see how bad this has become especially in the internet marketing industry just visit one of the many Internet Marketing Forums and read the comments, where this type of tactic worked unless you are totally trusted you are going to have a hard time making a dollar.
So Why Do So Many Fail In The First Few Months
OK this is a big question and has been asked many times in the past so what I will say firstly is attitude and secondly which is not really the fault of the newbie affiliate is all the bad information online about affiliate marketing.
And when I say bad, I mean all the rehashed Guru promoted products that are ending their life expectancy for making money so it’s now sold or it’s just rehashed rubbish.
It’s not that these newbie affiliates can’t succeed its the fact that through bad advice their bank accounts are emptied fast by the Gurus and they have no funds left to build a profitable online affiliate business. That doesn’t mean that all these products or membership sites are bad after all that is how I began my journey into affiliate marketing it’s just that some have become very greedy and are preying on the unknowing newbie marketers.
Another issue that you need to be aware of is when you make the decision to go into affiliate marketing is this is your business you are in control and you are making the decisions not the product vendor you are selling the products for but you. For those that truly want to be a success with their affiliate marketing, you need to understand this important point, you need to build quality websites.
The days of building many small sites are finished and the only time you should even consider doing this now is to test a market and if it turns into a viable proposition then create as much content as you can around the site to add even more affiliate links in that niche. Read our post on Evolving As An Online Marketer.
This is where you can really get ahead of the game and where all your marketing efforts will be realized. In addition to having a website that looks professional and trust worthy, you also need to make sure that it is user-friendly and have the capabilities of bringing in many potential clients.
Doing this will help you to motivate them to purchase the products you are promoting, you will need to do this by knowing what keywords are triggering sales in you niche and one of the best tools that I have found to do market research is called Market Samurai.
Stay Clear Of All The B.S And Do Your Own Research
Even with everything I have stated above it is essential that your website is promoting products and services that have a high demand or you will be really wasting your time.
You probably already know this but it needs to be said so it will stick in your mind, promoting products that don’t have high demand result in low-income so you need to be aware that what is hot today might be very cold tomorrow so you need to be constantly changing an updating your site so that you have the best opportunity to create a good income as an affiliate online.
As an example of this Squidoo was one such product that hundreds of e-books were sold each and every one promising to show you how to make a living online from a free site called Squidoo well it worked for a while but now Squidoo Drops The Hammer on Affiliate Lenses read our post.
Having the correct information and resources to succeed is crucial in affiliate marketing and if you are convinced that you only need to listen to all the so-called Guru’s flogging their wares then all you are doing is feeding their accounts and depleting yours very fast.
After all if they really had something that was making millions of dollars do you really think that they are going to give it to you, you have very few friends online and that’s a fact, and that’s even more so when it comes to affiliate marketing.
Affiliate Ready says
Affiliate marketing maybe an easy way to earn money but you need to invest time and effort in it in order to achieved your goal.
One can’t expect money if he will just sit back and do nothing. Of course one must formulate strategies on how to sell the products he is promoting.
marco says
hi,
interesting article. I’m going to follow you by feed but… i dont use any reader, and i’m really not the only. So i’ll add on favorites. Why dont you set up feed by mail?
It will be great. Mail me if you think you’ll do it, i’ll come back for registering soo fast!
AffiliateX says
Hi Marco
If you now click on the Subscribe to news feed at the top of the site you will be given an option to use your email to receive updates…
marco says
having no time will make my brain blow up.. just subscribed tnx
Andre Ocean says
Informative article plus, its easy to understand. Appreciate your effort