Create Your Ultimate Catalog

Back when I was running a catalog company in the 1990's, we used to have to keep make deals, keep inventory and ship every product in our catalog. But times have changed.

Now you can create a catalog with almost every product available anywhere in the world, sell the product and make money off it. All without talking on the phone to make a deal, ordering and keeping inventory and managing a shippiing crew. All with affiliate marketing which has come about as a service just in the last five years!

Simply put, affiliate programs, also called associate programs, are arrangements in which an online merchant Web site pays affiliate Web sites a commission to send them traffic. These affiliate Web sites post links to the merchant site and are paid according to a particular agreement. This agreement is usually based on the number of people the affiliate sends to the merchant's site, or the number of people they send who buy something or perform some other action. Some arrangements pay according to the number of people who visit the page containing their merchant site's banner advertisement. Basically, if a link on an affiliate site brings the merchant site traffic or money, the merchant site pays the affiliate site according to their agreement. Recruiting affiliates is an excellent way to sell products online, but it can also be a cheap and effective marketing strategy; it's a good way to get the word out about your site.

In 1996, Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, popularized this idea as an Internet marketing strategy. Amazon.com attracts affiliates to post links to individual books for sale on Amazon.com, or for Amazon.com in general, by promising them a percentage of the profits if someone clicks on the link and then purchases books or other items. The affiliate helps make the sale, but Amazon.com does everything else: They take the order, collect the money and ship the book to the customer. With over 500,000 affiliate Web sites now participating, Amazon.com's program is a resounding success.

Over the past few years, affiliate programs have grown enormously in popularity, taking many interesting forms. For many Web sites that don't deal much in e-commerce (selling products or services online) themselves, functioning as an affiliate is a good way to participate in e-commerce.

Affiliate marketing seems to be one of the Internet buzz-phrases that keeps coming around and around.You go to various website where products are sold and you typically see a banner add or text link that says something about 'You can become an affiliate and make 75% for each sale," or something like that.

But, what is affiliate marketing?

The answer is simple. You are essentially directing traffic around the Internet with simple ads or text links on a website that you operate, from merchants or other organizations that have a product or service to sell. Each time that merchant makes a sale based on your forwarding traffic - you get a percentage of that sale. Call it revenue sharing if you like.

The amount you make per sale varies from company to company and product to product, but in some cases the affiliate can make 80% of the profit from the sale. For example, affiliate marketing is a popular work at home way for e-book authors or sellers to get other people's help to market their product. Since they have little overhead (sales page maintenance), they can afford to give affiliates a larger piece of the pie - usually over 75% of the total sale. That means as an affiliate, you can make significant dollars, and do very little work - except promote products on your site

Create Your Ultimate Catalog

Many people have set up web pages with the specific intent of providing information about a topic, and then having web-generated affiliate links appear on that page, along with the related information. Each time a web-surfer clicks through that link and then buys a product - you collect money! How is that for being able to make money around the clock! It really is an ingenious work at home opportunity that can make you a great deal of money - with only a modicum of work.

Affiliate marketing can also work for you and your own Internet sales site. Attract affiliate advertisers for your own product, and you can open up the vast sales net on the Internet. If you localize your marketing and only sell from your own website, you are probably missing millions of other potential sales by limiting your product to only one sales funnel. You know the laws of averages - the more people that visit your site - the more people are going to buy your product.

Now you can create your ultimate catalog all by yourself.