Affiliate marketing is one of the top ways to sell a product or service over the web – it also happens to be one of the easiest ways to make a profit with your website. Affiliate marketing is an arrangement between a merchant and a site owner where the site owner (the affiliate) allows the placement by the merchant of links to their site on the owner’s.
The merchant pays the affiliate a commission for every sale made to a customer the affiliate has referred. These affiliate marketing programs are beneficial to all parties involved – the merchant gets increased sales, the affiliate gets commission and both get increased web traffic which boosts their search engine rankings. Affiliate marketing allows the merchant to get exposure for their product in markets they may not otherwise have reached. And of course, the more affiliates there are marketing a product, the more the merchant will sell.
For merchants, it’s like having a huge staff of sales persons who work on a commission-only basis. And given the win-win nature of affiliate marketing, the affiliate also reaps a number of benefits. First is having an easy revenue stream. All the affiliate needs to do is have the link to the merchant’s site – of course the more traffic the affiliate can drive to their site, the higher this income will be. Affiliate marketing also provides people with a great way to make an income from home.
There is close to no overhead – the product is entirely taken care of by the merchant, with the affiliate’s only responsibility being to bring in as many prospective customers as possible – this is what will create income for merchant and affiliate alike. Almost all affiliate programs are free to join, so there is no startup cost involved either. There are thousands of products and thousands of programs to choose from, with a program being available for nearly any product or service you can think of. This makes it easy to find an affiliate program which is relevant to the topic of your website.
There is also no sales experience needed. The majority of affiliate programs offer all the support you need to get started, including excellent marketing materials. Affiliate marketing is very simple to get started in and you can work from your own home in comfort. You never have to worry about inventories, shipping or order processing in affiliate marketing, just bringing prospects to the merchant – everything else is the merchant’s responsibility.
Since the web is a global marketplace, there are more than enough products to choose from. You can use new and innovative marketing tactics like viral marketing to increase your traffic. Remember, the more prospects you can attract, the more money you’ll be making. Another benefit of being an affiliate marketer is that there is zero risk to getting involved in this business – if you are marketing for a product and it’s not getting you anywhere, you can always just ditch it in favor of another one. There’s no contract binding you to one particular program.
The best thing about being an affiliate marketer is that you can make money even if you don’t have a lot of time to invest in the business. While you’ll need to put in some serious effort to really make it big as an affiliate marketer, you can make money even with the smallest amount of time and labor – affiliate marketing really can be easy money and is one of the best business opportunities currently available online.
22 Comments
John Marena
September 12, 2008I am trying to find an affiliate marketer to
help me sell my product.Can you guide me as
to how i find one.
Thank you
John M
ron harrington
September 12, 2008Hi Reed’
Just starting to look and decide what to do.
after seeing several of your works. You are
my HERO. Between you and Chris Cobb I believe
I can do this.
Thanks’
A soon to be Affiliate
Emmanuel Mba
September 12, 2008Hi Reed,
I have been an affiliate marketr for the past 2 years and I cannot say that I am excited because I have not made any substantial money from it.
What is the trick in choosing the right affiliate program to market?
Your Blog is an excellent material that helps us to understand the processes.
Thank you
William Beck
September 12, 2008Hi Reed,
Being an affiliate sounds like a very easy way to make money. In
reality being an affiliate takes a lot of work and goes back to
your blog from a couple days back. What a typical affiliate marketers
day is like. Traffic,Traffic,Traffic is the only way to make money unless
you have a big e-mail list.
Thanks good article,
Willy B
http://www.my-family-money.com
James
September 12, 2008Hey Reed
Good Post
I like your listed now feature
See Ya
Christopher Raine
September 12, 2008Hi Reed and your Readers
Affiliate marketing is easier than creating your own products for instance, this is true!
However everything online needs a certain level of education and determination, and affiliate marketing is no different.
Are you going to concentrate upon niches that you have an interest or a level of expertise?
Are you going to use squeeze pages or review pages? and will you follow the popular niches like “Internet marketing” and “Well being and diet loss” as examples?
You can find many products to promote at Click bank, paydot.com and commission junction will provide schemes that provide physical goods, whereas Click bank is totally digital, although it does have over 10,000 products and 100,000 plus affiliates, so this is well wortha visit. Products are not just internet marketing based so check it out!
If it is the internet/affiliate marketing niches type of area you want to concentrate upon there are definately programs that can aid with your learning curve
I hope this provides some further value to Reeds post.
Kind Regards
Chris
Bryan Hee
September 13, 2008In order to success as an affiliate marketer, we need to concentrate on the niche market and provide solution to solve the customers problems. Whenever we solve the customers problems and we will make a profit.
To Your success
Bryan Hee
David Innes Braybrooke
September 13, 2008Another Great blog post, Thanks Reed!
I think that affiliate marketing is a Great opportunity for any aspiring Internet businessperson to make some serious cash.
However, there is a bit of an art to it and many walk away disappointed after setting up elaborate websites with a plethora of affiliate products on sale and not being able to make a go of it!
When I fisrt started with affiliate marketing, I made sure to do an online course that explained all the steps and methods involved with this type of selling.
I was taught in detail about the intracacies of Clickbank.net and had a Great head-start with this invaluable knowledge!
For any Newbie affiliate marketer who may be reading this, One sage piece of advice for You: visit Clickbank.net First before going anywhere else! This site really is the Marketing Bible for any aspiring web master and has an enormous range of electronic products (ebooks) on all topics to sell with many having high commissions paid on them!
Commission Junction, Linkshare, and Performics are three other companies that I would highly recommend that You set an account up at. You can also do a search for any type of affiliate company by typing ‘search term’ + affiliate into Google; there are literally thousands of companies out there who would like You to advertise for them!
Take the marketing process one step at a time; set up the best, premium looking website that You can; have simple, clean navigation and several ways for the customer to be able to pay for any of Your listed products. Make sure to include an autoresponder on the site (try Aweber) and collect a list of people’s names and email addresses in order to sell them affiliate products at a later date. Offer Free giveaways and courses/bonuses to entice them to sign up!
Check out Amazon affiliates and a multitude of other companies to promote diversity on Your site/s. I recommend clixGalore to any aspiring marketer, for the sole fact that this company has some very attractive affiliate banners and buttons that can be incorporated on just about any niche site that You can think of.
Then go get some traffic, and Lots of it; the more that You can gather, the better! Write articles for EzineArticles.com and leave a URL link to Your website in the bio box (Never in the article’s body however!)
Familiarize Yourself with Social Bookmarking sites, such as Digg.com, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Propellor, Reddit, Mixx, Lipstick .. and a multitude of others. All these sites can be a goldmine for free traffic numbers!
Personally, although some may not agree with me, I would recommend that You also set up a few upgraded accounts on some of the best known Traffic Exchanges on the Net. If You really don’t like to surf, then invest in some traffic on the sites and load up credit allocations for each of Your listed URL’s! The T.E.’s that I would recommend that You use include: #1 rated – Traffic Swarm, Trafficera.com (fastest growing social/marketing site ~ I am on the #1 team in the world here and highly recommend Trafficera for large traffic numbers for Your websites!), Traffic Splash (another highly-rated exchange), AdlandPro, Start Exchange, Web Biz Insider, Top Surfer, Easy Hits 4 U, Traffic Pods, and ts25. There are many others but this list is a Great one to start with! Also, if You really cannot stand ‘clicking’ for credits, then the alternative is ‘hover surfing’; the best site with this function is Lords-of-Traffic, in my opinion.
Some people buy traffic for their sites and have great success with elevated sale’s numbers and an improved Alexa ranking, however, You need to be careful about the quality of the bought traffic and resist the temptation to buy large bulk number ‘specials’, which are frequently nothing more than ‘pop-under’ traffic and garbage in quality!
Visit popular forums and set up a URL link to Your site in the signature, be sure to use the Your message here function in order to get a ‘clean’ look to Your sig., then post quality entries and replies; each posting will have Your personalized link contained within – a Great source of free traffic! Forums that I would recommend that You visit are the ones with the highest Alexa rankings (number of visitors to the site). These ‘elite’ choices include: Digital Point Forum, Site Point, Warrior Forum, Off-topic Forum, and many others …. You can get a complete list on Big boards.
Be sure to include a signature link in Your emails too! It is surprising how many emails one writes in the space of a week, and so much free advertising can come about from this method!
Another program I have had some success with is ‘Entrecard’. This has been a source of quite a bit of traffic to my site and is simple to set up.
Starting a Squidoo lens can be an excellent idea in order to market Your wares and draw attention to Your websites. Investigate Hubpages too if You have some spare time!
Blogs are also good value and WordPress and Blogger are two sites that offer quality blogging tools and customer service! Blogs are an easy platform to affiliate market off and can draw You a lot of attention as Google tends to favor blog posts in its organic listings! Personally, I’m a huge fan of blogging and I can say from experience, being the former world #1 ranked blogger on the famous site Icon (Madonna.com), that blogs can win You a large cashed-up audience, who log in to read every post that You write! Always be sure to ‘ping’ each new blogpost at sites like Pingoat or Ping-O-Matic; this will inform the web of Your new listings quickly! (Note: WordPress blogs often ‘ping’ entries automatically).
Many bloggers set up Adsense ads on their sites and make a small fortune on the side, beside their affiliate marketing profits! (One word of Warning: Never list websites that have Adsense ads in Traffic Exchanges; this goes against Google’s T.O.S. ~ Terms Of Service!) If You have no luck with Adsense then try Chitika or Blogsvertise or Adbrite; three premium choices and great to augment Your affiliate profits!
On the subject of blogs, make sure You visit some of the really large and well-known weblogs in order to leave comments and links back to Your site. Blogs that I would recommend that You pay attention to are: ‘The Huffington Post’ – (#1 world ranked), Boing Boing (quirky news served with panache!), Techcrunch, Engadget, Gawker (Manhattan madness and glossy gossip), Perez Hilton’s blog (same area as Gawker), and several others too! (You can get complete listings by doing a
Google search).
P.P.C. (Pay Per Click) advertising is another great way to improve Your affiliate sales and it is well worth checking out sites such as Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing; even MSN has quite a good portal for PPC ads! Learn before You earn with PPC (wise advice), it is easy to lose a lot of money here so Take care! Never try to get the number one postioned ad as it often loses money, and keep all Your Adwords campaigns ‘tight’, with higly relevant common keyword groups that match up with the adcopy on Your destination/affiliate product pages!
Investigate some of the large social networking websites, such as Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut, and several others. You can set up links from Your personalized profiles that lead directly to Your affiliate products! A Great way to make sales!
Visit Yahoo Answers on a frequent basis and answer the questions pertaining to Your affiliate niche! If You give quality, well thought-out information, then You should be able to link Your answers to Your website/s where Your affiliate campaigns are located!
One other method for obtaining traffic to Your affiliate sites is through offline advertising. Personalised business cards can be purchased for about a cent each from an excellent site called Vista Print; I highly recommend them for the Best printing deals on the Net! You can also have t-shirts, pens, caps, stickers, and magnets printed with Your site’s URL – to be distributed in mass number ~ Great viral advertising there!
Good luck with Your affiliate marketing methods and be sure to read more updates on Reed’s blog in coming weeks. I have to say that Reed Floren is one of the most professional and hard-working Internet businessmen that I’ve ever come across! I have contacts with Kevin Rose, Jason Calacanis, Barack Obama, and many others and I would rate Reed as being right up there in this very elite company!
Best to You all!
Regards,
David I. Braybrooke. ‘Fatherspirit’.
David Innes Braybrookes last blog post..Join Trafficera.com for FREE Today!!
admin
September 13, 2008@John shoot me an email reedfloren AT gmail.com I may be able to help
@Ron thanks I am honored to be called a hero. Chris’s name sounds really familiar but I can’t place what all he does. What’s his site?
@Emmanuel first off I pick something I’m passionate about and that I have personally bought multiple information products that are related to it and in a similar price range. Then I contact the merchant and find out just how well it is converting.
@William I agree affiliate marketing is really hard unless you have a list or the ability to send a lot of traffic that converts to the page
@James thanks
@Chris great points thanks for sharing
@Bryan you are correct, making money is really easy once you start focusing on your customers and providing them with 10X the value in return for what they are giving you and an easy way to do that is to focus on a problem they have and make it go away
@David awesome advice. I may be opening up this blog for guest writers and if that’s something you are interested in doing let me know reedfloren AT gmail.com
@Business Blog and Internet Marketing Success Formula thank you for the trackbacks
Fidelis Ugboma
September 14, 2008Reed did and excellent job in highlighting the benefits of being an affiliate marketer / worker as well as the ease with which one can enter the markets.
Equally important is the contribution of William who zeroes the whole process to the generation of high volume traffic.
Chris and David spoke essential on how to generate the traffic and the various niches one should enter. The article by David is indeed a Marketers Reference Manual any day any time.
One wonders why he should say that this is his last blog posting. I would rather urge him to continue the good work.
I must say a big thank you to Reed for his article which gave rise to this inflow of knowledge and practical experience. I must add, in conclusion, that the world and I, have been made richer by them. Thank you all.
Fabian Tan
September 14, 2008Hey Reed,
The majority of my online profits comes from affiliate marketing. It just makes total sense. Every marketer should have a lead product, but affiliate marketing can be very easy to do with the right tactics 🙂
Fabian
http://www.ExplosiveTrafficSystem.com
Nan Woodward
September 14, 2008Affiliate marketing is a way for a newbie to start with no website, no products and actually very little experience.
Reed, I’m finding that reading your blog is providing me with absolutely free advice that is sooo top notch.
Nan
admin
September 15, 2008@Fidelis thanks, I’m glad you have been enjoying the blog
@Fabian I agree affiliate marketing especially to a list can be very easy and extremely profitable
@Nan thank you, glad you enjoy it.
luca
September 15, 2008Reed,
Another great post. There are as you say many benefits of being an Affiliate Marketer. The key is to educate yourself on the product you want to promote and beleive in it.
Affiliate Marketing is especially beneficial to new Internet Marketers because there’s no inventory or payment collections involved
A great way to promote affiliate programs is with a blog. My blog is fairly new but I plan to build a list and promote my site with free traffic tecqniques for now.
What are your thoughts on placing adsence on an affiliate type blog?
admin
September 15, 2008@luca thank you, I agree with you we have to know about the products we are promoting. As for me my blog hasn’t made much money maybe $100 or so and I have the benefit of having a large list to mail to. AdSense may work but I’m not allowed to have an AdSense account as Google doesn’t like me.
Jussi Koiranen
September 16, 2008Best thing about affiliate marketing is that you can actually start promoting a product you already love! Obviously this doesn’t apply to everything, but to most products you can find marketer looking for affiliates, and thus make money out of something you love! I have been doing this on a small scale using social networking sites and article directories to promote books I’ve liked with affiliate links to e-book stores, but I’ve been planning to start an actual website where I review books and have affiliate links with them so people can go the books.
admin
September 17, 2008@Jussi yes it’s really great to promote products you use and love since your enthusiasm is contagious.
Chris Imamshah
October 2, 2008Reed,
This was a great post. I am thoroughly enjoying the additional comments that your readers are providing to your posts, such as in this case, David’s.
People create products and charge for the information David provided here on this post. Fantastic how much we can learn from conversations like this.
I, too, love being an affiliate marketer, however, learning as I earn.
Keep up the good work.
To respond to your other email I received today, a big congratulations on tha arrival of your new baby. There are no words for that miracle. Enjoy!!
Chris,
http://www.fastinternetmarketingtips.com
admin
October 3, 2008@Chris you are right this is turning into an excellent community we just need to grow it some more, thank you regarding the birth of Zachary.
High Risk Merchants
June 19, 2009I am looking for a good affiliate marketer who can help me in selling my products.Can anyone help me ?
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