With affiliate marketing it's your goal to recommend a website to your online visitors. If they indeed buy the promoted service or product then you receive a commission of that sale. The interest for merchant is that he has made another sale that he wouldn't have made if you hadn't sent your visitors to his site, and you as an affiliate are happy because receive a commission of the sale, without having to worry about product creation, inventory etc.
In the case that you have an existing website already set up and running, you just have to add the necessary links. Another option would be to specifically build a new site just to promote a particular product or service. You only have to make more money than it takes to build or run the site.
How do you get paid?
The way in which you are paid completely depends upon how the merchant has set up his affiliate system. Some merchants have completely built their own affiliate program. Others use Clickbank or Commission Junction. Anyway, they're equipped with special types of software that assigns each affiliate marketer a special link that's used in promoting the product. All this software does is to track the sales of every marketer. The commissions are periodically paid by the merchant. PayPal is often used for payment or another system.
Choice of products or services to promote
The two factors that have the most influence on your income are:
1. how large are the commissions?
2. how well the product or service you promote, sells
So you will understand that the choice of which program you're going to promote is not really a detail and requires all your attention.
It's a bit like picking stocks on the stock market: In general, your results will be much better if you fully understand and are already familiar with the products you that you promote. This way, you'll be able to separate the wheat from the chaff much better. You will also write ads so much easier because you won't have to strain yourself coming up with the right things to say.
Most of us are already promoting products to our friends and relatives, even if the owner of the product doesn't pay you a dime. Think of a really good restaurant you went to or a really cool movie you've seen. So why then should you promote products online that you'll feel uncomfortable recommending to your family and friends if they would ask you about it? Especially when the choice of products is so overwhelming.
You can also look for affiliate programs that offer promo tools to their affiliates. These can be banners, text links, and of course graphics, or any other things that you can directly put on your website. It's also possible to refrain from using them, but to model your own after it instead.
But I guess in most cases, it will be still the commission rates that are the deciding factor, isn't it? Why are you in business after all? I advise you to limit yourself to only select products or services with a commission rate of at least 50%. This may seem like much but especially for digital products such as ebooks for instance this is certainly attainable. Furthermore, it's always interesting if you can pick programs that pay multi-tier commissions if it's possible. This means payment on multiple levels. If you have a visitor who buys from your link you are paid a commission. So far so good. Suppose that this visitor is so pleased with the product that he decides to become an affiliate himself. Each time that this person makes a sale, you still receive a commission from that sale because you were the one who referred this affiliate. How cool is that? Off course, it will not make a big difference in the beginning, but in the long term, it surely can make a huge difference, believe me. - 15790
In the case that you have an existing website already set up and running, you just have to add the necessary links. Another option would be to specifically build a new site just to promote a particular product or service. You only have to make more money than it takes to build or run the site.
How do you get paid?
The way in which you are paid completely depends upon how the merchant has set up his affiliate system. Some merchants have completely built their own affiliate program. Others use Clickbank or Commission Junction. Anyway, they're equipped with special types of software that assigns each affiliate marketer a special link that's used in promoting the product. All this software does is to track the sales of every marketer. The commissions are periodically paid by the merchant. PayPal is often used for payment or another system.
Choice of products or services to promote
The two factors that have the most influence on your income are:
1. how large are the commissions?
2. how well the product or service you promote, sells
So you will understand that the choice of which program you're going to promote is not really a detail and requires all your attention.
It's a bit like picking stocks on the stock market: In general, your results will be much better if you fully understand and are already familiar with the products you that you promote. This way, you'll be able to separate the wheat from the chaff much better. You will also write ads so much easier because you won't have to strain yourself coming up with the right things to say.
Most of us are already promoting products to our friends and relatives, even if the owner of the product doesn't pay you a dime. Think of a really good restaurant you went to or a really cool movie you've seen. So why then should you promote products online that you'll feel uncomfortable recommending to your family and friends if they would ask you about it? Especially when the choice of products is so overwhelming.
You can also look for affiliate programs that offer promo tools to their affiliates. These can be banners, text links, and of course graphics, or any other things that you can directly put on your website. It's also possible to refrain from using them, but to model your own after it instead.
But I guess in most cases, it will be still the commission rates that are the deciding factor, isn't it? Why are you in business after all? I advise you to limit yourself to only select products or services with a commission rate of at least 50%. This may seem like much but especially for digital products such as ebooks for instance this is certainly attainable. Furthermore, it's always interesting if you can pick programs that pay multi-tier commissions if it's possible. This means payment on multiple levels. If you have a visitor who buys from your link you are paid a commission. So far so good. Suppose that this visitor is so pleased with the product that he decides to become an affiliate himself. Each time that this person makes a sale, you still receive a commission from that sale because you were the one who referred this affiliate. How cool is that? Off course, it will not make a big difference in the beginning, but in the long term, it surely can make a huge difference, believe me. - 15790
About the Author:
Fact: 90% of all affiliates never make money. Are you fed up with working hard and earning zero $? Visit my blog and Download Affiliate Marketing Pitfalls to Avoid and don't be another sucker any more! It's FREE so what have you got to loose?