The Benefits of Affiliate Marketing

To become an affiliate with the best and highest paying commission is a dream for most and indeed affiliate marketers are paid significant commissions, sometimes up to 70%.

That said, what exactly is affiliate marketing and why should you care?

The basics of affiliate marketing is sending people to a merchant website/product via a link the affiliate has placed somewhere on the web, most often on their website. For doing this, and assuming the visitor buys, the affiliate receives a commission.

While it varies, affiliates will normally earn in the neighborhood of 25 to 75% for each sale generated from their efforts and tracked via their link.

In most cases they are paid via Paypal or via direct deposit, however special arrangements can be made if the affiliate is sending sufficient traffic and making sales.

Being an affiliate can pay handsomely and the merchant is only too happy to do so, why? Because if his product is popular, he can have a virtual army of people around the world doing the selling and they are only paid if someone buys.

And while the above speaks of the normal model, other affiliates can be paid for clicks (as in Google adsense) or via leads that are sent to an offline business. The ways to make money as an affiliate are only limited by the imagination.

If you're reading this and wondering how to become an affiliate, or possibly how the process works, just go to Google and type in “affiliate opportunities” or “affiliate companies” and you'll quickly have plenty of results to look at.

And while being a merchant eventually will bring the most money (think McDonalds), many merchants, in addition to selling their own product, are also affiliates for other products. They may as well offer their visitor something of value and not limit the opportunity.

Once you signup as an affiliate (usually very simple) usually the next question is how to go about marketing the products. There are entire courses to answer that, but the most common are solo ads, banner ads, PPC (pay per click), media buys and more. Depending on your budget, the reach can quickly be far and wide.

If your budget is small, writing a product review or making a YouTube video is an excellent way to get the word out. In most cases, unless you consider software costs, these methods are free for the affiliate to accomplish.

The great thing about affiliate marketing is simply this, there is no limit to what you can earn, and it's simply a matter of getting target traffic (visitors) to look at the offer or product. From that point it's simply a numbers game, a certain percentage of visitors will click, a percentage of those will buy.

And… while affiliate marketing is not MLM (multi-level-marketing) there are cases where an affiliate can receive spill over commissions on other affiliates that they refer. These are called sub-affiliates. Do this well enough and the profits can be staggers, but it won't happen overnight and it will take some work.

If you're considering becoming an affiliate, don't wait, do it now, there are people right this minute interested in what you have to say, and some of them will click your link.

The key? Find a good product, make certain they pay a commission you are comfortable with, then take action.