| If you are at all interested in selling online, starting a | | | | step in the flow. |
| home business, or simply earning some extra money, | | | | NOTE: some affiliate companies will provide you with a |
| you may have come across the term "Affiliate | | | | free website as part of their program, but there can |
| Marketing", or "Affiliate Program". Another, more | | | | be huge drawbacks to this as EVERYONE in their |
| traditional term for this concept is a reseller, value | | | | program usually gets the same web content and you |
| added reseller, VAR, or even distributor. They all mean | | | | will not get any traffic from organic searching (i.e. |
| roughly the same thing (not exactly, but for this | | | | Google, Yahoo, Cuil, etc.). You will then have to use |
| purpose, close enough). You are essentially selling | | | | vehicles like Google AdWords or other external |
| someone's product and / or service. | | | | marketing methods to drive traffic to your site...which is |
| In my last article, "Get Rich Quick and Lose Weight | | | | not necessarily a bad thing, but you need to be aware |
| Fast - or How to Write an e-Book in 5 Days", I | | | | of it as it can impact your budget significantly. |
| provided a download which spoke about the | | | | - In any case, once registered with a vendor as an |
| importance of having your own product and how to | | | | affiliate marketer, you need to start getting web traffic |
| create it. However, some people are reluctant to try | | | | to your newly created web site for the product. When |
| that route or too busy to take the necessary steps to | | | | a visitor clicks the promoted product link supplied by |
| creating their own information product. Or perhaps | | | | the vendor, they are then taken to the main vendor |
| they don't want to sell an information product and | | | | website and the visitor is tracked (using cookies) that |
| would like something a bit more tangible. For these | | | | they were referred from your website. If that visitor |
| people, affiliate marketing is a good option...if done right. | | | | then purchases something (within 30 or 60 days of |
| Affiliate marketing simply means that you have | | | | first visit, depending on vendor), you are theoretically |
| registered with someone (usually a company) to re-sell | | | | credited with the commission. |
| their product or service by using the internet (or your | | | | Now, there is more to it than that. A lot happens under |
| website) as your personal sales representative. The | | | | the covers and much of it is unadvertised so be |
| premise of this is quite simple: | | | | careful. For example, sometimes commission |
| - Find a product or service that you are interested in | | | | payments must accumulate to a certain level (e.g. |
| marketing, AND ensure it allows affiliates. If it doesn't, | | | | $500 owed to you) before you ever get paid ANY |
| you can approach the company directly to see if you | | | | commission. Sometimes you need to sell the product 5 |
| can represent them. More on this in another article. | | | | or even 10 times before you get paid any commission, |
| - Register to become an affiliate with this company. | | | | no matter how much you are owed. On big ticket |
| There are many ways to do this. It depends on the | | | | items that are poorly marketed, that can be a problem. |
| vendor. Some vendors will give you a customized URL | | | | Some affiliate marketers plan for this phenomena. |
| which you must post on your web page, some | | | | They KNOW that you have one or two sales in you |
| vendors go through services like ClickBank which | | | | as everyone can do a least one to themselves and |
| ultimately generates a ClickBank URL for you to post, | | | | one to a close friend. Beyond that, you need to |
| and then there are other vendors who are much more | | | | actually work hard to sell. While it is certainly possible, |
| discriminating, requiring payment, product training or | | | | there is no easy trick to traffic generation, despite |
| even marketing plan verification before allowing an | | | | what people tout with their programs. Generating |
| affiliate to sell their product. | | | | traffic is a lot of work. Most casual affiliate marketers |
| - Once approved, you must create a website to | | | | sell a couple of products and never see a dime in |
| market the product and then post your newly acquired | | | | commission because of this lack of continued sales |
| affiliate URLs to the new website. Certainly one line | | | | preventing them from achieving their targeted |
| does not cover the complexities of doing this step | | | | threshold. |
| correctly (there are site layouts to create, content to | | | | Bottom line, you need traffic to your site. Whether you |
| write that is UNIQUE, W3C compliancy, search engine | | | | pay for it, or whether it is free (organic), that is up to |
| validation and submission, etc., etc.), but this is the next | | | | you. |