Affiliation Marketing – How to Make Money as an Affiliate

There are many people out there who have never heard of affiliate marketing. In this article I will give you an overview of what it means to be an affiliate and how you can get started.

The overwhelming majority of people who has made a purchase online at one time or another from an affiliate and usually not even aware of it. That means a great opportunity for you to become an affiliate and make money.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is where you promote the products of various online merchants. Affiliates send traffic to other websites and when someone makes a purchase the affiliate earns a commission. The commissions are usually tracked through networks that act as a middle man between the affiliate and a merchant. The largest and most well known affiliate networks are clickbank and commission junction.

Some might wonder why merchants need affiliates. A common question you might hear is why don’t the merchants just do all the promotion themselves? The answer to that is there is no way anyone can have the resources or time to do all the advertising on their own. The internet is too large for one person to do all the promoting for their websites. By using affiliates they are able to get more traffic and sales for their websites without having to spend the time or advertising dollars.

Affiliate marketing then is a winning situation for the merchant who only has to share a percentage of their sales in exchange for higher sale levels. It is also a winning situation for the affiliate who does not have to deal with merchandise or customer problems and only has to worry about traffic generation.

While some gurus have called affiliate marketing the perfect business the reality is that there are challenges that come with any business. The biggest challenge is the high levels of competition from other marketers. Despite this there is still many opportunities for affiliates who are able to think creatively to come up with new ways of marketing effectively.

What Do I Need to Get Started?

First and foremost you need a website. Nothing fancy just a simple site that will get you accepted by the affiliate program companies such as Commission Junction and Trade Doubler. This is where you are going to the market shops, stores and services offered by the affiliate programs.

Choosing a Good Web Host

Next your website will need web hosting. I recommend hostgator.com and hostmonster.com. I use both of these web hosting companies to host several of my affiliate marketing websites. In my opinion they provide great value and most importantly reliable customer service. Take a look and judge for yourself or choose from the many web hosting companies out there on the net.

Affiliate Programs – Join Now and Start Earning

The good news is many leading shops, stores and services run an affiliation program. You may well be amazed at the number of names you will recognize.

You may even shop at some of these shops and stores yourself – become an affiliate and save money! (Although not all affiliation programs allow this.)

Millions of people are using the internet to shop and buy services online and the really great news is that they will pay you for sending customers their way.