Sunday, 20 October 2013

Is Affiliate Marketing Good Business?

By Christina R. McIver


Are you interested in affiliate marketing for beginners? This is a term that's often difficult for beginners to understand but it's actually easy to learn and utilize. Affiliate marketing is simply the process of displaying advertisements for someone's products or services on your website and making a commission from those advertisements. Before you sign up with any affiliate you need to understand the entire process. Let's see how this process works and how you can use it.

To begin you will need to have a website, blog or some other place to place advertisements. There are many affiliate marketing programs online and you need to pick the best ones for your website or blog. The best approach is to choose programs that match your website content and to have that content work to enhance your website. There are many providers online that have multiple programs you can join or you can join individual programs online.Make sure your site is somewhat established before you join one of them, as you need the traffic coming in to make money with them. Don't make the mistake of joining dozens of affiliates, find a few that match your content and pick the best ones.

Work From Home - With unemployment at record highs and most people unhappy with their jobs, people are turning to other resources for extra monthly income.Start up Cost Are Minimal - An Affiliate Marketing Business is very cost efficient. On average, you can get started for under $100. Most professional marketers will have their own domain name, hosting package and autoresponder. All fairly inexpensive business necessities when starting an online internet business.No products to create - When joining an affiliate program, you choose the products you want to promote without all the hassles of actually having to create the product. As the affiliate you also do not have to handle the shipping and customer service issues.

The power of the internet - It works for you 24/7. You place ads on various marketing platforms, some paid some free and generate a sale which leads to a commission any time of the day or evening. This is the beauty of making money with affiliate marketing!There are thousands of great affiliate programs you can join and earn a resale commission when one of your customers buys their product. In most cases commissions can range from 25% - 50%. Some commissions are a one time deal (selling a book on Amazon) and some are monthly residual incomes. You might suggest an autoresponder to a customer/web visitor and they purchase from your link and you'll receive commission every month as long as they remain a customer.

Affiliate marketing is selling someone else's service or product for which you receive a commission. What makes it so attractive to marketers is that you don't have to worry about producing, updating and supporting the product or service. That is all completed by the product or service owner.As an affiliate, your job is to try to push as much converting traffic as you can to the sales page of the product or service. This way you benefit as you get your commission and the owner benefits as they make money too without having to worry about traffic etc.The majority of the big online stores have affiliate programs (such as Amazon) and the built-in affiliate tracking is why so many digital product creators use services like Clickbank or Digiresults. Anything you can buy on the internet probably has an affiliate program.The commission structures are different for all products and services. For example, Amazon only pay a small percentage for select items. Clickbank products tend to pay out between 50% and 75% of the total cost.This does not mean that promoting Clickbank products is necessarily more profitable though. We will discuss this further later on.

Price comparison sites are just giant affiliate sites. They show you the best price and when you click to jump to the cheapest site, you are using an affiliate link. This is how they make their money.The biggest benefit of being an affiliate is you don't have to worry about creating the product. Most products also require some sort of support after the sale has been made and once again, this is not the responsibility of the affiliate.All an affiliate has to worry about is getting quality traffic to the sales page and hoping that it generates sales (of which they earn a percentage).It is a symbiotic relationship between product owner and affiliate: one deals with the product, one deals with traffic.If the product or service has a recurring cost, such as a monthly membership fee, then the affiliate earns commission every month too.The most obvious obstacle is that other affiliates are also competing with you to drive traffic to the sales page.You cannot control the quality of after sales care and support that your traffic receives after they buy the product. Sometimes this can reflect badly on the affiliate.How Does it Work in Practice? To become an affiliate of a particular product or service, you need to get your own affiliate link.This link is what earns you commissions.Any visitor that arrives at the sales page from your link will earn you commission if they buy the product or service.

Blogging is a process which calls for time to develop traffic and the loyalty of your readers! This is what makes up a successful blog however expecting overnight results can quickly lead to discouragement and frustration! This can and often does result in a lower quality of effort which is reflected in what you offer your readers and if they're not happy they will not return! Embrace the process and expect that it will take time or you'll be in for a big surprise and/or disappointment!




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