Affiliate Marketing: What is it? by Lee Torres
The common question is "What is affiliate marketing?" Affiliate marketing is a part of the big and constantly expanding business occurring online. Many people get attracted to affiliate marketing because of the possibility of making large sums of money from the comforts of their home. An independent party, an affiliate, like you, promotes a merchant's product. When a sale is made, the merchant pays you a commission.
Most of the time, however, new affiliates are not aware of what has to be done in order to be successful in affiliate marketing.
This misunderstanding among "newbies" often leads to costly mistakes and giving up. People often see affiliate marketing as involving either mainly selling or advertising. While these two things are important, affiliate marketing involves more than these two things.
As an affiliate marketer, you'll be responsible for building your sites and their layouts, building relationships with customers, researching their needs and learning the techniques to drive customers to the merchants. Some of the skills you need are technical.
As an affiliate, you drive traffic to a merchant's site. When you provide a customer or subscriber, you receive compensation. Many merchants enjoy affiliate marketing as a way to advertise their products, because they don't pay money until a sale is made.
Today, it's very popular to have affiliate networks that work as a third party between merchants and affiliates. Affiliates go to an affiliate network, where they find products to promote. When a sale is made, the affiliate network gets the money from the merchant and then gives it to the affiliate. This ensures that the affiliate, which is you, gets paid by the merchant and that you won't have to go through hassles getting your money.
The merchant benefits greatly form affiliate marketing. The merchant is someone with a product, and would like to have their products sold by affiliates. Giving the affiliates the chance to sell products cuts down the cost of advertising a merchant needs to do. The merchant also doesn't have to spend valuable time trying to reach customers. In essence, the affiliates take care of the advertising efforts.
The affiliate benefits greatly form affiliate marketing. An affiliate, someone like you, is a person who often has a website and promotes the products. It is possible to make a full time income from affiliate marketing. It's not possible to guarantee affiliate marketing success, but if you put in the right amount of time and hard work, you increase your chances significantly and may one day make a full time income from home.
To your success!
Lee
About the Author
Lee Torres is an online publisher and knowledgeable source on creating a profit online. Visit: The Online Marketing Success Journal
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Original article: http://leetorres.com/affiliate-marketing-what-is-it |