A Brief Explanation of Affiliate Marketing
If you’ve been looking for a great home business to start with little or no money, you might want to consider affiliate marketing. If you aren’t familiar with what affiliate marketing is all about, you should be because it is one of the best opportunities available today. Here’s a brief explanation.
Affiliate marketing explained.
The concept of affiliate marketing is very simple – you sign up to become an affiliate for a product or service. Then, you tell others about the product and they decide to purchase it. When they buy the product you told them about (when you make a sale), you get a commission. The product can be a physical product that has to be shipped, or it can be a digital product that can be downloaded instantly. That’s all that affiliate marketing is, really. It’s that simple.
Many business offer affiliate programs and some of them will even give you your own affiliate website. More often, you will create your own website, or some other way of telling people about your product. Your website will direct people to the product seller and it will pass on a code that is specific to you so that when they make a purchase, you receive the commission.
This is a great business because once you learn how to do it, you can make virtually unlimited amounts of money and much of your work can be done on autopilot.
It’s a great business model, but it’s not a get rich quick scheme!
One word of caution, while it’s completely true that you can make a ton of money with little effort that will only happen after you’ve spent the time to build your site and get a steady stream of traffic. So at first, you’ll have to work very hard. Then once your site is established it won’t take much effort at all to keep it going.
Don’t ever let someone convince you that you’ll be making six figures in a few months especially if you’ve never done this before. Affiliate marketing isn’t a hard business to learn, but you’ll still need to take the time to learn it.
Where Do the Customers Come From?
One of the biggest challenges you will face is getting a steady stream of hungry customers to your website (traffic). Another will be convincing them to go on to learn more about the product.
There are many methods you can use to get customers, many of them are completely free and easy to learn, while others can be quite expensive and have a pretty steep learning curve.
Article Marketing
Article marketing, for example, is a great free way of generating a lot of traffic. This method simply involves you writing, or hiring someone to write for you, articles that will provide valuable information about your product or service. This doesn’t mean an article that is just one long sales pitch. It means articles that contain truly helpful information.
You may post your articles on your own website, or you may submit them to an article directory where it will be published. When someone reads your article, they can click on a link to your website at the bottom of the article and visit your site.
Pay Per Click
Another way of generating traffic is with Pay Per Click or PPC. This method can also be very effective. However, it’s not free and learning to do it effectively has a steep learning curve and you could spend a lot of money while you’re learning. With PPC you submit ads to a search engine (like Google) and target a keyword specific to your website. When someone clicks on your ad they come to your website, but you have to pay for each click.
The amount you’ll pay will vary on the popularity of the keywords you’ve chosen as well as a quality score and other variables. If it sounds a little complicated that’s because it is. It isn’t a good idea to try PPC without first getting some training in how to do it properly. Otherwise you could spend yourself right out of business.
I hope this has helped you get a better idea of what affiliate marketing is all about. It really is a great way to make a lot of money, but never forget that it’s a real business and will take a little time and effort to get it off the ground. Treat it like a business and you’ll be reaping the rewards for the rest of your life!
If you would like to learn more about affiliate marketing, even how to develop your own affiliate marketing business, download our free Affiliate Marketing Profits report.