What Is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate Marketing Explained

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What is affiliate marketing? An affiliate is like a salesperson who works on commission. If the salesperson introduces a potential customer to a new product, they will get paid only if that customer purchases the product. Most major online companies use affiliates as their salesforce. This helps internet businesses build a stream of traffic and it helps the affiliate make money.

Businesses that use affiliate marketers create coded links that help track where each customer learn about the products or businesses. When those links are followed to the businesses' web site, the affiliate makes a commission on sales. For instance, you have undublishedly followed links from reviews about items on Amazon.com. Amazon uses thousands of marketers to bring traffic to their site – one reason for their fast success in the marketplace.

Everyday products from shampoo to shoes, baby diapers to expensive electronics are all sold through affiliate programs. You can make a little extra money as an affiliate, or even make enough to live on. Top affiliates, often called super-affiliates, may make six or even seven figure incoming from their work. Most affiliates do not earn anywhere near that much – but there are many thousands of people who use affiliate marketing to add to their income each month.

Getting started as an affiliate marketer is simple – although succeeding at it usually takes some time. To get started as an affiliate marketer, you will need to sign up with at least one affiliate program. There are many options to choose from. Some companies use their own in-house affiliate programs. Others use intermediaries to manage the affiliate programs for them. Some big-name affiliate programs are ClickBank, Commission Junction and Linkshare.

You can locate potential programs by searching the name of a product or category you would like to promote and add the word "affiliate." So you could go to a search engine and type in something like "treadmills + affiliate."

Successful marketers use many methods to bring traffic to the offers they promote. You can get started with free methods like creating review nblogs. More experienced affiliates use their own web sites and mailing lists to attract an audience.

The real key to success in affiliate marketing is to promote products you really believe in. Sincerity matters – and customers can smell phony!