What the heck is affiliate marketing?

In simple terms – it is an internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. It is process in which a product or service developed by one person is sold by another seller for a share of profit. Hence in internet marketing, affiliate Marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant. The affiliate just sits back and waits for the profits to roll in.

 It's also beneficial to the merchant/owner of the website.

Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods like organic  search engine optimization,  paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising.

Affiliate Marketing has three key players:

   1. Retailer / Merchant :   The owner of the product is the one who is here to sell. He normally provides some marketing material (sales letter, affiliate link, tracking facility) to the affiliate to publish. The more websites a merchant is affiliated with, the more chances of viewing his products get, and all he has to do is allow ads for his products to appear on someone else's website and earn profits by the selling / viewing of the same.

   2. Publisher/ affiliate : The website owner will place advertisements on his websites to either help sell the merchant's products or to send potential customers to the merchant's website, all in exchange for a share of the profits. By placing affiliate marketing advertising on websites all over the Internet, he doesn't need to do much selling on his own.

   3. Customer :  It helps the customer by providing more ways to discover products and services that they needs; and if they visit a website to get information on a specific topic for instance, that website may suggest a book they were previously unaware of. The person can then visit the page where the book is being offered for sale and choose to buy it. Another example – A customer visits a website because he wants to use the site’s service which may be a forum, a gambling site, a social network, or pretty much anything else. They will then be offered links to products associated with that service.

   4. Affiliate marketing  is one of the driving forces behind e-commerce. It allows various parties on the internet to profit from it in some way. Also, it encourages more people to get involved in the world of e-commerce,  doing it does require a substantial investment of time and/or money to be seen as an expert in your work which is essential to maintain traffic and sales as an affiliate. To be truly effective in affiliate marketing it is a very wise choice to create as much relevant content on that site as you can and make yourself the leading authority on the subject. This has two main benefits as it gives your consumers the trust factor and the search engines look more favorably on your website in the rankings.

There are three ways to earn money through affiliate marketing:

• Pay Per Click —  A certain amount of money is deposited in the affiliate's account depending on the product and amount of the commission every time a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by "clicking" on the link leading to the merchant's website,

• Pay Per Sale —  A percentage, or commission, is deposited into the affiliate's account every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate's website.

• Pay Per Lead —  A previously determined amount is deposited into the affiliate's account every time a potential client registers at the merchant's website as a result of the advertisement on the affiliate's account.

Affiliate marketing is considered one of the best ways to earn money online. If this is an avenue you wish to pursue, you'd be well advised to research each merchant thoroughly. After that, there's not much else to do except wait for the profits to roll in! The catch being - target those times when the customer resistance is low, and then give them an offer that is irresistible... It leads to creating an Affiliate Marketing Landmine effect!