Affiliate Marketing: The Key to Earning Money Online

Affiliate marketing is online marketing that allows you as a publisher, acting as a third party marketing organization, to earn money by helping a business promote their products or services. Basically, you put advertisements on your blog or website that promote a product or service for a business and if people click on that link and purchase something, you earn a commission. This includes rewards sites in which rewards such as cash or gifts are awarded for referrals or completion of an offer.

Typically, there are four main core components of affiliate marketing: the merchant, the publisher, the network, and the customer.  What normally happens is that the merchant will partner with a publisher in an effort to direct traffic to the merchant’s website. The way that a publisher will get rewarded or paid is either by a Cost Per Lead (CPL) or a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis or a percentage of the actual sales that is processed through the merchant’s website.

For example, let’s say that you have a blog and you partner with a merchant.  Advertisements are placed in key locations on your blog and if your readers click on those advertisements and make a purchase from your merchant, you get a percentage of those sales.  It’s basically using one website to drive traffic to another.

Sounds simple, right?  Be aware, though, that affiliate marketing is not “easy money” and it is quite difficult to make a living off the amount of money that an average affiliate makes. There are certain factors that come into play as to whether you will actually make good money or not.  Such factors include the amount of traffic to your site, having quality products to offer, utilizing SEO for your website, and having a certain trust with your readership.

Affiliate marketing is similar to other Internet marketing avenues and utilizes methods such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Search Advertising, E-Mail Marketing, and Display Advertising.

It is not a free-for-all in the affiliate marketing world.  The merchant is at discretion to decide what publishers to use as well as what marketing tactics the publisher is able to use.  Merchants have to be cautious because some publishers use deceptive strategies to generate leads for the merchant.

The average commission rates for affiliates vary between advertisers and affiliate networks. They can range from $1 for an Email Submit to $60 for marketing Stock Trading Software. A few of the largest affiliate networks are Linkshare, Commission Junction, Clickbank and Google Affiliate Network.

Before deciding to do affiliate marketing you should be aware of a couple of things. First of all, most of the email, search engine, and adware spam that we see come as a direct result of affiliate marketing.  There are always malicious marketers out there willing to do whatever they have to do to get their tracking code on a user’s browser and though some of it is taken care of, much of it is not.  Second, as the number of affiliates that bid on branded keywords in search engines goes up, the cost of search engine marketing for the merchant increases as well.

It is possible to earn a good income through affiliate marketing, but it will take effort, patience, and a plan.  The first thing that you will want to do is learn as much as you can about affiliate marketing and then devise a plan.  Learn about affiliate programs that suit you and your website.  Another important factor is to have relevant content on your website that your readers will appreciate and come back for more.  Update your site with new blogs or information weekly so that you will always have fresh information for your readers. Lastly, be patient and have fun in the process of learning and making money from affiliate marketing.

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