What is Affiliate Marketing?
June 26, 2011 by Andrew Zapp
Filed under Affiliate Marketing
In this modern and ever-changing world, we often hear the term affiliate when talking about market or businesses. Affiliate is a commercial entity of a larger organization or company. An affiliate, in plain English, is a person who does not directly works for a company, but rather works to promote that company’s product. For each and every product that is sold with the help of the affiliate, the person earns a commission for his work to promote the product.
So affiliate marketing can be easily understood as a marketing method strictly used by affiliates to promote products not of his own and earn commission. Nowadays, when we talk about affiliate marketing, it is 99% that we are talking about the internet marketing method which affiliate use to simply drive as much traffic as possible to his affiliate link for the product that he (or she) is promoting. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that this is the closest form of passive income. A person set up a website to promote a product, then promote the websites, submit the sites to directories and get the page ranked, and then he can relax, sit back, and watch the money coming in from months to months. Many good and unique affiliate websites have a life span of well over a year. The affiliate only has to spend few days to build a site and promote it, and then he can earn a passive income for months to come.
Now that might seems much less than a full time job so how people live off of that kind of money? Some people might ask. But, remember, that is only for one website. Take in the account of the time spent to have a website like that up and running and we can see the tremendous potential. A website can now be built under half an hour, many services take much less, i.e. WordPress or Blogger. Then about 5 to 7 days for it to get ranked high on google, which is plenty of time and often a site doesn’t need that much time. So for about 1 week of work, a person can earn from $100 – $500 a month, every month for at least 1 year. Now multiply it by 12 weeks (3 month), he now has a passive income of at least $1,200 and as much as $6,000 a month. That is a full time job that most American is earning. Another great thing about affiliate marketing is that it can be easily multiplied, so the limit is really no limit. Or could I say the limit depends on how much a person wants to earn. A well written website with rich content and promoted carefully can earn anywhere from $100 to $500 a month, many pull in much more than that.
Just focus on getting traffics, the creation part has already been done (now you can, by any mean, produce your own products and earn even more). No responsibility for after sales service for the product. This is the merchant’s responsibility, not the affiliate. No need to deal with shipping, storage, packaging, or inventories. And again, this is the job of the merchant. The ability to promote as many products as you want, even thousands if you want. Remember, the only limit is you and yourself. So let’s recap. What affiliate marketing can do for you? Well, here are bullet points in case you miss anything above: No need to develop your own product.
The merchant now can focus on making quality products, which can help both themselves and the affiliate to have a good customer base. Cheap advertisement. Only pay when the affiliate makes a sale. The same passive income scheme with only little time to work and produce the product. Once a merchant create a good and quality product, he can expect to earn from it for years. As you can see, affiliate Marketing is the best way to earn money from home. Though might be tough for beginners, it is very lucrative. But please watch out for scams online as more and more scams surface the internet every day. So remember these important things: Affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick business scheme. Stay away from those who promise you thousands of dollars overnight. It, like any other job, requires hard work. Don’t expect to have money falling from the sky to your hands. Though merchant is most likely the one to be blamed for a poor quality product, do watch out and research a product before promote it. You don’t want to ruin your reputation. And that’s all for affiliate marketing. Now go out there and get to work. Now, what affiliate marketing can do for the merchant? More exposure, obviously.
Want to find out more about Affiliate Marketing, then visit Affiliate Marketing’s site on how to choose the best Quality Affiliate Marketing Course for your needs.