Affiliate Marketing 101

Affiliate marketing programs are a great way to get
income for your website, and a great introduction
to e-commerce. The more people that drop by your
website, the great your chance will be at creating
an excellent income.

Affiliate marketing programs are where a company
offers to pay you a set amount for either a click
through from your website, or a set amount for
visitors signing up, or even a percentage of a
purchase made by visitors as a result of being
referred from your website.

Even if visitors don't make a purchase immediately,
almost all programs offer cookie duration, normally
consisting of 30 - 90 days. What this means, is
that as long as the visitors have the cookie in
their cache, you'll still recieve a profit from
the sale.

The biggest amount of time in maintaining your
site will be searching and implementing affiliations
with various companies. Even though there's a lot
of money in affiliate marketing, you have to take
the time to search for the best programs.

One thing that you may not be happy with, is the
idea of other companies banners littering your
website. If you use too many banners or links on
any web page, it can confuse and help to irritate
your visitors. More than one animated element on
a web page can be very distracting as well.

Affiliate tracking can also be a problem. Once
you have applied to become an affiliate for a
company, they'll usually supply you with a
personalized link or code. It's very important
that you implement this code into your page
correctly, or you may be sending visitors to the
company without recieving any profit.

A majority of snippets in the code will contain
a unique user ID, which the company uses to
distinguish which site sent traffic.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the revenue sharing between
online advertisers (and merchants) and online
salespeople. Compensation and pay is based on
performance measures, normally in the form of clicks,
sales, and registrations.

The advertisers and merchants are normally referred
to as affiliate merchants, and publishers or sales
people are known as affiliates.

The many benefits of affiliate marketing include
the potential for making lots of money. You can
automate a lot of the advertising process and
receive payment only for desired results, which
includes sales, registrations, and clicks.

Even though most merchants will assume some level
of risk with fraud, there is still a level of risk
involved. Once you know what you're doing with
affiliate marketing, you'll be on top well before
you know it.

Affiliate marketing has been a contributor to the
rise of many companies online, including Amazon.com.
Amazon.com was one of the first adopters of affiliate
marketing, and now has thousands of affiliate
relationships.

When it comes to making money, affiliate marketing
is in a league of it's own. You don't have to
worry about bosses breathing down your neck, and
you are in control of everything you do with
your company and your website.

Affiliate marketing also gives you the chance to
stand behind products you know and love, be
offering links and banners to them on your personal
website. You'll receive money for each product
purchased that you represent, which is reason
enough to participate.

If you've been looking for extra money, affiliate
marketing is the way to go. You can stick with
one merchant or go with as many as you need for
your business. Affilate marketing on the internet
is truly becoming more and more popular - making
now the time for you to get your foot in the
door.