What is affiliate marketing?
When two websites start sharing revenue to sell a product or service, it is known as affiliate marketing. Amazon was the world's first to start large-scale affiliate marketing. Most of the affiliates get paid around 25-75% for sales generated through their websites. Payment is made on the number of clicks, registrations, leads, sales etc or as agreed between the two parties. When a person clicks on the advertisement on a website the cookie is saved in the person's computer, which is tracked and if a sale is done then the person gets paid the amount of commission agreed. Anybody having a website which has good number of visitors can join an affiliate program.
There are many affiliate marketing websites through which you can choose the products you would like to promote through your website. Commission Junction, ClickBank, PaydotCom, Amazon, Linkshare are some of the well-known affiliate marketing websites. Thousands of publishers join affiliate marketing daily. They want to promote other products or services and start making money. The affiliates get their daily statistics and reports on the number of clicks, sales, leads etc. Affiliate marketing connects buyers and sellers. This is how online marketing works. The amount of money spent online is increasing day by day. E-commerce is picking up at a very fast rate worldwide.
15 Reasons to Become an Affiliate Marketer:
There are HUGE benefits to promoting affiliate programs with your own home-based Internet business, and I've come up with a list of 15 great reasons to become an affiliate marketer.
Let's look at each reason separately:
1. No Production Costs - The cost to develop and produce a new product is prohibitive for almost anyone who wants to start a home-based business. With affiliate programs, production costs aren't an issue. The product has been developed and proven - all on the merchant's nickel.
2. Low Cost Set-up - Compared with building a brick and mortar store, starting a home-based Internet business is relatively cheap. You probably already have a desk, Internet-connected computer and word-processing software, which is all the equipment you may need.
3. No Fees for Joining or Licenses to Buy - I often compare doing business as an affiliate, with distributing a line of products in the real world. The biggest difference is that the distributor must often pay for a license to distribute products within a limited geographic region. Affiliate programs, on the other hand, are usually free to join, and geographic market reach is limited only by the affiliate's ability to promote his web site.
4. Choose From Thousands of Products and Services - What isn't sold online? That list must be shorter than the one describing all that IS sold online. There are thousands and thousands of affiliate programs selling every product under the sun. That makes it easy to find products related to your current or planned web site.
5. No Sales Experience Needed - When I started my affiliate business, I had absolutely no sales experience. That wasn't a problem, however. The companies I affiliated with provided excellent marketing material. Using their sales copy, I was able to get my first affiliate site up in less than a day.
6. No Employees - The largest expense of most businesses is employee salaries. Although there might be times when you need or want someone to work for you as an affiliate, it's doubtful you'll ever have to worry about hiring full or part-time employees. When you have a project you want to hire out, it is easy to find specialists in every computer-related field who can work for you from the comfort of THEIR own homes. You pay only for the project, and never have to worry about ongoing employee-related benefits and deductions.
7. No Expensive Merchant Accounts Needed - Setting up a merchant account for any business is a time-consuming and costly business. It's even more tedious for Internet businesses. However, merchant accounts aren't a concern when you're an affiliate. The merchant bears that cost and handles all processing of payments. You never have to lose sleep over potential chargebacks, fraud or losing your merchant account when you're an affiliate.
8. No Inventory to Carry - Even if you live in a small one-bedroom apartment, as an affiliate you can sell large items without storage concerns.
9. No Order-Processing - Forget the problems associated with collecting and storing names, addresses, credit card numbers, etc. The merchant does all that!
10. No Product Shipping - The cost and hassle to prepare and ship products to customers worldwide could be staggering. Affiliates never have to worry about packaging supplies or postal rates.
11. No Customer Service Concerns - Do you hate the prospect of dealing with nasty people or customer complaints? Don't worry about it! The merchant handles the snivelers.
12. Make Money While You Sleep - What other business allows you as a sole proprietor to keep your doors open and keep making money even when you take breaks or after you go home for the night?
13. The World at Your Doorstep - The Internet is the world's largest marketplace. You can drive more visitors to your online store in a day, than many small-town merchants sees in his or her brick and mortar business in a year.
14. Minimal Risk - The product you chose isn't making money? Dump it. Take down your links and promote another! It's that easy. There are no long-term contracts binding you to products that don't sell.
15. High Income Potential - If you have a job, your salary or hourly wage is probably pre-determined. Maybe there's not much, other than working overtime, that you can do to increase your income. With your own affiliate business on the Internet your income potential is limited only by your desire, effort and imagination.
There you have them - all the good reasons to start your own online affiliate marketing business. Start today and benefit from this incredibly simple, cost-effective business opportunity known as affiliate marketing. The time is right, and the time is now.
Read the amazing true story of how one woman, with no previous business experience, earns 400,000+ per year ... selling other people's stuff online!
In her down-to-earth, sincere and often humorous style, Rosalind Gardner guides you through the entire process of building an affiliate marketing business on the 'Net. In over 300 pages, and more than 68,000 words, you'll learn how to pick the best programs, negotiate a commission raise and save time, money and effort on everything from affiliate software to web hosting. To learn exactly how she does it, Click Here
