Saturday, October 12, 2013

Is Affiliate Marketing Good Business?

By Joseph S. Boozer


The ugly truth is that almost tens of thousands of people who get involved in a business opportunity become part of a huge market segment that's being misled, manipulated, and exploited.There seems to be no shortage of opportunities out there these days. Within the home business industry, you'll find all kinds of different 'flavors' of money-making opportunities, but generally speaking, there are 3 primary business models that most people are familiar with within the home business arena. I want to tell you about one of them: affiliate marketing business.
[home based business ideas]


Affiliate Marketing Business - Yes it is a business and a very large one at that. This is one of the simplest ways to make money with affiliate marketing because there are hundreds, if not thousands of affiliate programs that you can sign-up with and begin making money immediately. Most of them are free to join. As an affiliate marketer, you market a particular company's product or service, and when you send them a customer (make a sale), you're paid a commission.Here's a quick example to make money with affiliate marketing... ever notice how many websites promote books from Amazon.com? Well, most of these websites are actually Amazon.com affiliates... and when someone clicks on one of their links from their site and buys a book on Amazon, the website owner automatically receives a commission directly from Amazon.

To understand affiliate marketing for beginners, let's look at the whole process. Say you are reviewing books on your website. You could review a book and then join an affiliate program such as Amazon which is a trusted online retailer. You place a link or image to that book you're reviewing along with your affiliate ID. If someone clicks and buys the book through your link, you make a commission. You will usually get some type of commission per sale such as 30% on each item that you sell. You don't stock anything, the site you sign up for as an affiliate ships the goods but you get a cut on the sale. You usually need to make a certain amount before the company deposits money into your bank account or sends you a check.

If you're going to try affiliate marketing for beginners you need to avoid some mistakes. The first mistake is that you can't just plaster your website with advertisements and expect people to click and buy through your links. You must create great content on your website or blog so people have an incentive to click. You must give visitors valuable information that they can.Having an affiliate marketing blog is a very effective way to offer products while also building both your credibility and a following! The problem many affiliates encounter however is that to build a successful blog much of your focus needs to be placed on your readers! The typical affiliate mindset is to generate traffic, make product offers and earn commissions but when blogging this is NOT a good approach! Here are 5 common errors made by affiliates that prevent them from developing a successful blog that will help them earn an income!

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.

Links will pay you for all purchases on that site up until a set number of days after the initial click of the link. This number of days is called cookie length and it varies for each affiliate program. Some can be 60 days, some only 24 hours.Some systems, such as Digiresults or JVZoo, require that you apply to become an affiliate and must explain how you plan to promote a product. Others, such as Clickbank, allow you to be an affiliate for all products or services once you have joined up.Once you have joined an affiliate program, often the product owner will supply the affiliate with banner ads to use and emails to send out to lists. For the beginner this takes some of the work out of promoting the product.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment