Affiliate marketing Introduction
What is affiliate marketing?
That is the first question you are most likely to ask yourself when you hear about people making money by affiliate marketing. In fact there are so many people making lots of money via affiliate marketing, some of them are making a fortune.
Well we are definitely not talking about affiliate marketing in real world, which involves knocking doors, cold calling and annoying people. Yes its more technically known as a sales person or agent, but in the online world the term is affiliate marketer. Or simply an ‘affiliate’.
You know every single thing on the Internet is related to the affiliate concept? like when facebook asks you to invite your friends to join facebook – that is affiliate marketing but here facebook is the affiliate itself, even though you get nothing out of it. The term ‘affiliate’ itself describes the concept, meaning that you have a ‘affiliation’ with the site, product or service which you promote for a direct or indirect gain in any form, which can be money, branding, exposure, a job, any sort of benefit.
Well let me cut short and since almost everyone knows what online affiliate marketing is, in case you don’t know then its a concept where you earn money by promoting other peoples products (OPP).That’s the beauty of affiliate marketing, you just get payed for spreading the word. You will get commissions or share of a product or services value when someone who you send to your affiliate link buys that product you promote, affiliate systems are fully automated all you need to do is send the traffic to your link.
Most of the time there is also no need for explaining a product since the advertiser or product owner takes care of it automatically on the landing page. However you can sell hope as and write good product reviews to convince your prospect beforehand & let the product owner take care of converting the already convinced visitor. You can read my previous post on how to write a good product review for more tips & tricks.
Note: There are many types of affiliate programs, Pay per click, pay per sale, pay per lead, pay per install, pay per view, etc. This post is basically a affiliate marketing guide for the pay per sale type of programs.
Golden rule of affiliate marketing:
The more attractive, valuable, affordable, safe and demanding a product is the more it sells. So decide carefully on what you want to promote. Of course the product selection is just one single criteria, other criteria including competition, niche selection & targeted traffic sources. Promotion should always be done in niche related sites and should not involve methods of spam or any illegal activity.
Doing reviews of the site or product, offering discount coupons, making optimum use of the advertising tools the program provides is a good move if you are starting out, since most product owners will provide lots of information.
Once you master yourself as a affiliate, the next thing you should do is sell your mastery to others and make even more money of it, which is usually expressing or revealing your secret or methods to your success, people buy guides on topics such as make money online all the time. This is a huge industry, but of course first you must be a successful affiliate to step into that industry. Like i always say don’t sell false information, because the IM karma will get back to you very hard!
Their are 3 types of affiliate systems,
1.Affiliate portals, where all the product owners comes at one place to promote their product to a affiliate network sites which have huge number of affiliates and promoters, the best example of such systems include clickbank, amazon, commission junction, etc. In fact if you do have a product to sell or wish to promote products as an affiliate then sign up to Clickbank, which is the biggest retailer of online & digital products. If you wish to sell or promote physical real world products then amazon is the way to go.
2.Personal Affiliate programs, these are affiliate programs that are solely operated by a single company or person promoting products created by them, such sites don’t usually have a huge affiliate followers but they provide a bigger chance of promoting a unique product for the publishers and affiliates. Examples of such systems are every single affiliate program that is self operated by the site, which you promote.
Many major companies also operate in house affiliate programs, you can search on Google for related products to your niche ( the topic of your website example weight loss). Do so by typing ‘Niche keyword’ + Affiliate program, for example if you want to promote weight loss products then search for ‘weight loss affiliate program’ etc. But to be honest you can find all types of products on Clickbank & amazon as i mentioned before.
3. No product Affiliate systems, sounds weird doesn’t it? well their are some sites that have affiliate system which are built for 1 single purpose the purpose is to build a huge mailing list, a huge list of followers for a company or a huge database of affiliates to promote future products. These programs might provide a virtual income showcase but their might not be any actual income from such sites. Usually comprises of free to join sites or services that gives you a bonus when you get others to join.
Now lets come to the advantages of being a affiliate.
Why you should be a affiliate?
1. Affiliate marketing is the most easiest form of making money on the Internet : You can’t make free money online any other way.
2. Their is no need for your own site: You can make money online by writing articles, or as its commonly known as bum marketing.
3. No need to create your own products: Because you promote other peoples products.
4. No cold calling, no handling customer complains: Everything is online & automated.
5. Huge income opportunity with less work: All you have to do is send quality & targeted traffic, then wait for them to convert.
6. Big market with lots of products to promote: you can never run out of products to promote, there are thousands of new products popping out daily & hundreds that are doing well for the past decade!
7. Promote Niche targeted products, Smart way to earn, no hardships.
8. Payment goes directly to your paypal, bank or to your mailbox, no waiting for salaries or meeting your quota.
9. Tier opportunities, thus enhancing your income by getting others to become affiliates for a program you promote.
10. Recurring income opportunities, earn thousands month after month for doing no work. Some affiliate programs offer recurring income.
Tier system:
Tier system is something similar to MLM but in this case a tier system refers to other affiliates who you have referred to join a particular affiliate program, the program depending on its type might offer you additional bonuses for spreading the words about them, for example you might be paid 5% of the income of the affiliates you referred, which could be very rewarding.
Recurring income :
Some affiliate programs are membership sites, where the customer has to pay monthly or yearly to use their services, most of these sites offer a recurring income affiliate plan which grants you a share of the customers payment every month, month after month. Even though you might think that web hosting companies are such programs where the customers pay monthly or yearly, however not all web hosts offer recurring income affiliate programs.
Recurring income can be very useful since it is guaranteed to give you income every single month even if you don’t do any work at all for that particular month, and depending on the size of the commission and numbers you referred you could be earning anywhere between $1000 – $100k every month without doing any extra work at all, but promoting such services are not as easy and their are chances the customer might stop using the service after few months of membership.
What are Hoplink or Affiliate links:
A hoplink or affiliate link is a unique link which identifies you on the affiliate system along with many others, this is the backbone of your promotion and it should be protected very well.
Clocking affiliate links could be useful, not only it prevents the loss of potential customers but also from web savvy people who try to hack into the service you promote.
One thing every affiliate should understand is that affiliate marketing is not going to make you rich overnight, their are many people who joins various affiliate programs and end up gaining nothing and after few months they give up, its not like MLM system and their is a need of being creative and work smart as well as hard to bank big bucks.
Well i think its enough about affiliate marketing as an introduction, just Google ‘affiliate programs’ or find affiliate directories which has tonnes of affiliate programs, chose the one your interested in or head over to Clickbank and start your journey.
The biggest and most single reason that you will be a successful affiliate marketer is this: Action! Take action & get to work.
Don’t forget to share this post, subscribe to my RSS feeds & follow me on twitter @sameerjoad till then have a good day,
SJ
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Dirnov
hi
can you please specify what alert it gives you and what antivirus do you use?
thanks for the input
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