What is affiliate marketing? In a nutshell affiliate marketing is about becoming an “affiliate” of someone who offers a product and/or service online (or off, actually). Marketing of course means “promoting” or “taking to market” the good or service. “Market” meaning the demographical group of people interested in the product.
Affiliate marketing is about:
- “Affiliating” yourself with someone who offers a product and/or a service.
- Signing up with them to market their product and/or service.
- Promoting that product and/or service through various means and receiving commissions on sales.
Affiliate marketing isn’t about “selling” it’s about providing a service to folks and connecting them with the solution to their problems – that’s all. Once you find the group of people with the “problem.”
The reason so many businesses online use “affiliates” is that they don’t have to spend their own resources promoting their products. It’s the perfect business model for the small or large business. Resources can be directed toward creating new products and services as opposed to promoting existing ones.
Third Party Affiliate Vendors
There are many third party affiliate vendors out there who serve as a “central processing center” for people who offer goods and services as well as those seeking to become their affiliates.
When businesses offering goods and services sign up with a third-party affiliate vendor, he’s also signing up for that vendors vast array of affiliate marketers. These third-party services act as a clearing house, logging and collecting the dollars for each sale, paying the affiliate and the business owner, taking a piece of the action for their trouble. It’s a win-win-win scenario which works for everyone.
And it has put many folks into a much better position financially.
Some of the big name third-party affiliate vendors are (there are many more):
You become an affiliate for free by signing up at any one of these sites. When you decide to promote someone’s product or service, you obtain a unique ID and coded links with your affiliate ID in them and place them in your article on your website. That way, when someone clicks over from your site to the affiliate’s sale page, a cookie is set on their computer with your affiliate ID giving you credit for the sale.
The Internet is changing the way we do business and it provides an opportunity for many people to develop alternate sources of income. It’s just blossoming and with 1.5 billion people online (and that number grows daily), there’s plenty to go around as not everyone enjoys working online.
But if you do enjoy computers, why don’t you turn that play time into making money at the same time?
