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Home » The Famous Blog » Affiliate Marketing Facts You Need to Know

Affiliate Marketing Facts You Need to Know

April 12, 2011 - Last Modified: February 14, 2013 by Peter Markovic 1,226

Affiliate Marketing

Building a basic website is not a difficult task. It does not involve a huge financial or time investment. Once you have decided on a topic and registered a domain name, along with choosing a hosting company, the fun part starts.

The preceding is usually done after deciding the purpose for building a brand new website from scratch. It might simply be a blog for a topic of interest or a hobby and to make a little money to cover your hosting costs.

Perhaps you have a more serious intent and have your own product to promote and sell online?

You may be one of the millions of people that have a full time job and dream of working from home and becoming your own boss. But how?

Answer: Affiliate Marketing

A method of marketing someone else’s product rather than your own by selling products for commission.

A short summary of how this works is as follows.

How affiliate marketing Works

affiliate marketing

A visitor arrives on a web-page and clicks on an advertisement or link. This action takes the visitor to another web-page containing information about the product and the option to buy.

If the visitor chooses to buy one or more of the products, a commission is paid to the owner of the referring web-page

It is the merchant who handles the sale in every way. They will obtain the all the information from the customer required to complete the transaction.

Once the sale is completed and verified, you will receive a commission according to the criteria as agreed between your self and the merchant. Sales are tracked using cookies and are generally paid even when the visitor returns to the merchants site months later.

The period of time will vary and is something that needs to be confirmed when the affiliate signs up.

Sales and Statistics Management

Sales tracking and commission payments are most commonly managed by companies that specialize in this area. They provide a facility that offers all you need to setup and maintain a relationship with the company or companies that you promote.

Benefits

  • Work from home or anywhere
  • No need to stock or ship products
  • No product support headaches
  • Work your own hours
  • Minimal costs and risk – build up your business in the evenings after work

The Reality

It is not a get-rich-quick system. That said, there are plenty of genuine success stories from affiliates who have done very well financially and realized the dream of working anywhere in the world using their laptops.

It is the freedom from being tied to a traditional bricks and mortar business that attracts many people to this type of online business.

Stay the Course

Like any other business, it takes hard work and self motivation to succeed, along with a learning curve. There are plenty of resources to guide you through the early steps of how to setup a website and choosing a niche.

Success is a measure of persistence that many are not willing to apply. They often give up when their dreams of making easy money in a short amount of time is not realized.

Plan Before You Act

Failure is always due to the lack of a full and complete understanding of the business, and unrealistic expectations of what is required to succeed. This is true of any business venture, regardless if it is an online business or a more traditional brick and mortar type. The reality is that many new business ventures are doomed to failure because of ignorance and the lack of a clear understanding of how the business works. A proper business plan is an absolute must.

Choosing Products

Pick a product that you are passionate about and is not overly competitive. It is much easier to rank a web page by picking a niche that is a specialized interest and not all ready covered of by a multitude of strong websites.

Find a subject that you know or enjoy. Write supporting information that is helpful and informative yet unique. Promote the information.

Traffic

  • PPC advertising
  • Natural search

For any online business to succeed, you need targeted traffic to the web-page you are promoting. Tt is the core of the an online business. The two most common ways are:

A) Google Natural Search, a method that requires a thorough understanding of SEO. Search engines display web-pages in order of relevancy for the key word being searched. A competitive keyword will be very difficult with which to rank .“Work from home” compared to “book about eggs” for example..

The redeeming feature of this method is that it is free, although learning how to rank a web-page involves a fairly substantial learning curve.

B) Pay Per Click Advertising, a method employed by many online marketers which can work very well if you get it right. Get it wrong, and it is a very quick way to max out your credit card for a very little return..

On Page Promotion

There are many ways of presenting a web page that offers an opportunity for the reader to click through to the seller, and make a sale. It might be a simple as displaying a banner or text advertisement somewhere on the your web page, or providing a link somewhere within the text of an article.

Learning the Business

There plenty of resources to help you learn the business. Start by reading relevant information published by reputable authors who have proven and up to-date strategies to help make the decision as to whether the business is for you.

Amazon.com offers a number of choices when buying books which are not limited to traditional paper books.

Choices extend to digital books that may be downloaded as ebooks and read in an electronic book reader or listening to them in a mp3 player using audio books.

Recommended Reading

Rosalind Gardner is a well known name in the world of affiliate marketing and has a proven track record not only as being a well known success story, but for her training that offers all the information needed to succeed.

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Filed Under: Affiliates

About Peter Markovic

Follow @digitalbooks

My name is Peter Markovic, the publisher of AudioForBooks.com. I enjoy writing about my passion, not only books, but Digital books and related products.

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{ 29 Responses }

  1. Kostas says:
    In my opinion the best way to make money thru affiliate marketing is by suggesting quality products to your email list subscribers because if you just promote affiliate products of low quality you will lose your credibility and as a result sell only a few affiliate products if any.
  2. Mark says:
    Great article Peter. Thank you for pointing out the necessity of staying the course. There are so many misleading products out there about blogging, affiliate marketing and the like that many fall into the trap of believing that it is easy and quick which couldn't be farther from the truth. Sincerely, Mark
  3. Darren says:
    You are correct in saying it's not a get rich quick business. It takes lots of hard work and time to see results. Most people will end up giving it up quickly after it doesn't produce results. It's those that stick with it that keep growing in their sales.
  4. Peter Markovic says:
    Hi Neeraj, There is no realtionship between alexa ranking and adsense. Adsense cn be a great source of income if you have the right keywords and plenty of traffic to the page. I would recommend James to anyone wishing to learn the business. http://jamesmartell.com/
    • Neeraj Rawat says:
      Yup I got you but what I meant to say if a site has an alexa rank of 79k or below it means it has good traffic still saw they dont use adsense . Thanks for the link,got his answer book by subscribing to the mailing list lets see what I can do after reading that
  5. Neeraj Rawat says:
    Hey Peter, Very nice article I have heard that people earning much more in affiliate marketing than adsense even I was surprised to see many sites with damn good alexa ranking with no adsense on it.Do you have any blog specially on article marketing? or if you know about any just let us know where we can read and learn more about affiliate marketing Regards Neeraj
  6. Mani Viswanathan says:
    I started with Affiliate Marketing around the start of this week. Your tips will be helpful. Thanks for sharing them :)
  7. Mark says:
    i would not agree with this statement: "Minimal costs and risk – build up your business in the evenings after work". As for cost and risk, it's up to you whether to use paid advertising methods, though there is always a risk, that you'll start from wrong steps. So all in all - affiliate marketing is a great business, but you have to know what you're doing.
  8. Peter Markovic says:
    QUOTE" What kind of products do you suggest to promote, I mean for me they should be the ones that I have used and really benefited from. "QUOTE QUOTE" But in terms of stats, like conversion rate or commission percentage, which ones do you prefer the most. "QUOTE The key to which product you should promote is one that you are passionate about! Passion will keep you motivated and driving forward because you enjoy the subject material. Passion will also shine through in your work and be obvious to those that view it. If you do not have belief and passion for what you are promoting, then your work may become boring and the chances of giving up are much higher. If you are for example passionate about football, then a website somehow related to the sport will be much more fun something that you have no interest in. By using the adwords keyword tool, you can test how any others are searching for information related to your interest. From there check how many other websites are competing for attention in your niche? (It is the quality and not quantity of competing websites which is important) Lastly find an affiliate program that offers products related to your niche. Conversion rates vary considerably, as an approximate guide 1% /8% depending on a whole array of conditions.
  9. karan says:
    That was a quick introduction to Affiliate marketing. What kind of products do you suggest to promote, I mean for me they should be the ones that I have used and really benefited from. But in terms of stats, like conversion rate or commission percentage, which ones do you prefer the most.
  10. HP van Duuren says:
    Thanks for your Post, On the Home Business Blogspot you can read all about Affiliate Marketing, and I am still in the process of learning it myself. It definitely isn't a Get-rich-quick system so on the Home Business Blog you will only find practical 'down-to earth' posts about Affiliate Marketing, and you can also have a look at several other blogs like for example a blog with Business Books, and Blogs about things like Writing, Travel, Digital Camera Photography etc. etc. on all those Blogs (pre) Selling Topic Related Products. 'Go Ahead, feel free to have a visit....,' I would love to see your comments, and dispite the fact that I am, a ...., euh..., well a famous blogger with euh....., - constantly having fans and 'blogging groopies' asking me for my autograph - you can ask me all your questions about Affiliate Marketing, and will do my best to answer them for you, or atleast I might be able to know where to look for answers. :) All the Best, To your Happy - Home Business - Inspiration, HP
  11. Peter Markovic says:
    Quote "Rosalind really knows her stuff, and has been making a living from affiliate marketing for many years. She’s one of the genuine gems to look out for." Quote Very true , I would also strongly recommend James Martell http://jamesmartell.com/ My main source of inspiration and learning over the years. I would suggest James and Rosalind are the two leading coaches for affiliate marketing.
  12. Peter Markovic says:
    Quote" Choosing your niche is a critical part of affiliate marketing. There’s a lot to learn, and always something you can test and improve. But if you end up in a niche that is too big, you’re invisible. A niche that is too small and you’ll barely cover your hosting fees. Quote" Very true, one method for to help you determine if any given niche is worth going after is to use Googles Adword keyword tool. https://adwords.google.com/ Simply type in a keyword phrase, for example "Growing vegetables at home', Choose a region and search. Each word in the phrase is a keyword 'growing' 'vegetables' 'home' and should individual return results relative to the keyword phrase as determined by Google. Uncheck 'Only show ideas closely related to my search terms' to see the results for how many searches both globally and locally for the phrase. Experiment using this tool and get to know it well. Perhaps a few of us could compare our results, mine are 480 searches globally and locally monthly. There is more information available. Particularly related to competition for the keywords, these results are often misunderstood. Would anyone like to comment about why I might be saying that?
  13. MarkH says:
    Choosing your niche is a critical part of affiliate marketing. There's a lot to learn, and always something you can test and improve. But if you end up in a niche that is too big, you're invisible. A niche that is too small, and you'll barely cover your hosting fees.There is some great information around on choosing a niche (look out for Ed Dale). But I've also personally seen large volumes of people succeed at affiliate marketing by using SBI - even total newbies who have never put a web page up before.I also rate Rosalind Gardner mentioned in the recommended reading above. Rosalind really knows her stuff, and has been making a living from affiliate marketing for many years. She's one of the genuine gems to look out for.
  14. Isabel Rodrigues - Pro Blogger Journey says:
    Excellent post. We all feel affiliate marketing is a piece of cake. Guys you need to plan to make those big bucks ;) What I like about your post is the way you have detailed out all the important points of affiliate marketing.
  15. Alexis says:
    Affiliate marketing is definitely not a get-rich quick scheme like many people think. You have to plan an plan well. That starts from picking the right niche for you. I have noticed over the years that niche selection is a major component in an affiliate marketer success. No matter the type of traffic you use to drive visitors to your offers you need to do a thorough market research to measure your chances. In some niches the competition is so high that it would be a waste of time to get in unless you have appropriate tools .
  16. Alex says:
    Nice article, but although this may sound all well and easy, affiliate marketing needs time and a lot of experiments in order to make it work. I think time can make you better, but having books and/or courses like that you mentioned can help you a lot and can make you make leaps instead of small steps in affiliate marketing.
  17. Dennis Edell says:
    Nice basic guide Peter, just the type of guest I look for. ;-)
  18. Fran Aslam the Onlinewriter says:
    A good article for affiliate marketing. Short to the point and effective. Keep up the good work Fran A
  19. Pumama says:
    Affiliate Marketing is difficult method to make money but can help us to make huge money . I joined affiliate marketing for 6 months but just earn a little money
  20. R.O.M.E.L.O. says:
    Affiliate Marketing will definitely not make you rich over night. To be successful, you must find the correct product or item to promote or sell and create content around that. I do this with a couple of my blogs and I do get a few sign-ups from them.
  21. John says:
    Hi Peter, Nice post, honestly i am looking for opportunity to start affiliate marketing. Your post is really very helpful to me Thanks for wonderful information
  22. Peter Markovic says:
    Thank you to all those that have commented so far, if any one has any questions, I would be happpy to help :)
  23. semmy says:
    Hi Peter I really like Rosalind, I hear about affiliate program from her. I think she is on of affiliate marketer pioneer. Thanks for your article.
  24. Jitendra Singh says:
    I haven't started affiliate marketing yet, was always wondering what would the best way to start on it. Now i think i learned quite here. Time to go :)
  25. Justin says:
    I haven't been able to sell any affiliate products yet but it's only been two months since I started using affiliate marketing.
  26. Brittany Rubinstein says:
    You broke this down wonderfully! I'm trying to get into affiliate marketing, but don't really know where to start. This article was super helpful! Thanks!
  27. Bishwajeet says:
    I am still a noob at affiliate marketing , so good read for me
  28. Kevin Douglas says:
    Great article, Peter! Affiliate marketing is such an un-exact science, you broke it down as well as I've read. One thing that you mentioned is staying the course. New affiliate marketers are easily discouraged when they don't see immediate results. But they have to realize that affiliate marketing is a marathon and not a sprint. Thanks for a great introduction to some and refresher to others of affiliate marketing!

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