Benefits of Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is becoming one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It’s also a great way for someone with a website to make money online. The basics of Affiliate Marketing are simple…you and a merchant of some sort have an agreement. You (the affiliate) markets and promotes the merchant’s website &/or products. The merchant agrees to pay a set commission amount to the affiliate on all sales generated by that affiliate. Each time someone clicks on the affiliate’s link and makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission.
Over the years I have promoted many different products and websites! It’s very easy to do with so many free advertising sites out there. And this creates a win-win situation for both the business owner/merchant and the affiliate! A merchant is able to reach a much wider market using affiliates. The more affiliate sites they have…the more traffic to the merchant’s website… which ultimately leads to more sales!
Of course, the more referrals the affiliate sends to the merchant’s website thru their affiliate links and sales are made, the more commissions they earn.
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn additional money while working from home because it’s so low cost to do. Unless you have your own product to market, typically speaking the products you will market are already developed by the merchant or someone else. All you have to do is try to get the product/website in front of as many people as possible so they’ll hopefully make a purchase.
If you are wondering where to start, and don’t really want to do the typical ClickBank products since they so over-marketed these days, try searching some of the big retailers you like to shop at. For example…Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Cabelas, Bass Pro Shops, PetSmart, and Office Depot are all retailers that have affiliate programs! Scroll down to the bottom of the home pages and find the links for their affiliate programs. You’ll have to check each one out to see what the criteria is to be approved by them, but once approved and you start sending traffic to their sites thru your affiliate links, you’ll start receiving commissions on the sales generated! Don’t just limit yourself to these examples…do some simple Google searches for your favorite retailers to see if they offer similar programs.
There are also a variety of affiliate programs to choose from where you can find thousands of different products and websites to market (ie: Paydotcom.com; Affiliatebot.com; Clicksor.com; CJ.com; etc). They are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs. There are some affiliate sites that require you to have your own website already established…such as a blog…and will want to approve you based on the relevance of your site with their product. If that’s the case and you don’t have a site already, you can create a generic site cheap using GoDaddy.com or some other web hosting site.
The good thing about all of this is…no sales experience is necessary. Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material. In affiliate marketing, your primary responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, product shipping, returns, etc. These things along with customer service support are the responsibility of the merchant.
With the use of the internet these days you can easily find thousands of prospects. You can boost your advertising by using more aggressive strategies such as viral marketing. Another benefit of affiliate marketing is the minimal risk involved. If a product you are marketing is not making you money then you can dump that one and pick another one to market until you can find your niche that’s profitable.
The best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to boost your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a part-time thing. With your affiliate business you can easily earn extra income, however you DO have to spend some time initially getting signed up with merchants and exert some time and effort in marketing your links to start building up some traffic. Once you get going and start seeing the earning potential, it’s fun finding more and more retailers that use affiliate marketers! These are all potential money-makers for you!
Once you get comfy with affiliate marketing, you can start expanding your income streams by checking out other items to market such as with this link I've posted below. You sign up as an affiliate to earn 100% commissions for a Mobile Marketing program! You know the type..."text a certain code word to a certain number" and receive info, prizes, vote on something, etc. It's becoming very popular in today's market...so just something else for you to look into!
