What is Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing is a way of promoting a product in anticipation for a reward in terms of profit. You promote peoples or a company product. You will also receive commission for every purchase (pay per sale), visit (pay per click), new customer (pay per lead), made by the people you sent to the company selling the product.
Many companies like to use affiliate marketing because they do not incur any marketing expenses unless the desired result is realized.
There are also some e-commerce sites around today which run their own affiliate programs, while others use third party services. These provide intermediaries who will track traffic or sales that are referred to them from their various affiliates. There are many businesses online today who owe much of their growth and success to the use of affiliate marketing. It has been especially successful for small and midsize businesses on the internet.
We have now looked at what affiliate marketing is, now let us look at some reasons as why it is a good type of online business to set up.
No Production Costs
With an affiliate program, production costs are no longer an issue as the product has been developed and proven to be good. Best of all, it has all come out of the merchant’s accounts and not yours.
Do not need a lot of money to set up.
All you will need is a desk, computer, internet connection and word processing software to get started.
Costs Involved
Normally it is free to join an affiliate program, and all the set up costs and shipping costs will be met by the merchant whose products you are selling. Plus, as you do not need any where to store goods, this is another reason for joining an affiliate program. So even if you happen to live in a 1 bedroom apartment, you can still sell the biggest products going as an affiliate because all the goods are held by the merchant you are working as an affiliate for.
Choices
There are thousands of products and services that you can choose from. So finding the right products for either a website you have already or one that you are planning to build is immense.
No need to have a Merchants Account
This can be a time consuming and costly expense for anyone setting up a business more so where an online business is concerned. However, as an affiliate, the merchant you are selling the product for will bear all costs, as well as handle the processing of all payments. So you never have to worry about any potential charge backs, fraudulent purchases or losing your merchant account completely as an affiliate. Plus, no longer will you be concerned with collecting and storing names and addresses of customers along with their credit card details, as this is all done by the merchant who you are affiliated to.
Plus, no longer do you have to worry about dealing with awkward or nasty customers and their complaints. This is down to the merchant to deal with.
Probably one of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you can make money while you sleep.
Another benefit to get into affiliate marketing is that if the product you chose isn’t making money, then you can just dump it. Remove any links to the product and then start promoting another instead. This is because there are no long term contracts which bind you to selling one particular product, so the risk to you is minimal.
If you work hard at affiliate marketing, then the potential to earn a good income is high. It really depends on just how much you want it and how much effort you are willing to put in to the products you are trying to sell.
For an idea of just what kinds of products and services offer affiliate programs, check out Clickbank.com or ComissionJunction.com. Both of these sites are generally at the very top of most affiliate marketers’ lists.
