An affiliate is an
individual or company that drives new customers to a merchant of
products or provider of services. If that merchant makes a
sale through the affiliate's referral then the affiliate is paid a commission.
Typically, without a sale, there is no commission for the
affiliate. However, some merchants pay a small fee for referrals
(clicks through to their website) or for those referrals that have, for
example, obtained a quote without necessarily buying a product or
service.
The commissions paid vary considerably. They can be quite generous eg
those offered through the Clickbank network or, indeed, most leading
affiliate networks.
It is possible to make a good living as a successful affiliate if you
understand the principles of niche marketing,
know how to optimize your
website for keywords / content and use
multiple search engine
optimization strategies. You can actually become a successful
online
affiliate without even having your own website, although lack of your
own website severely restricts your affiliate
marketing opportunites as
most affiliate networks require
you to operate your own website and
will only approve you on the basis of an assessment of that site.
One attractive aspect of being an affiliate is that your business runs
24/7, even when you are asleep or on vacation. You can also sell
worldwide.
Some self-appointed affiliate 'gurus' like to argue that affiliate
marketing is easy. Actually, it's not. Here's why:
A central feature of any free market is that popular products or
services with a high uptake from consumers will attract fierce
competition between their suppliers particularly where substantial
profits are to be had. These suppliers, or merchants, constantly battle
against each other for an increased market share. In this crowded
market place, they need to exploit as many different strategies as
possible to maintain or improve their sales. The fiercer the
competiton, the more money is required for advertising and promotional
budgets.
Many of these merchants have found that a relatively cost-effective
approach is to use affiliates to drive traffic to their websites. For
the merchant, this is a low-risk option as no payment is made without a
sale.
Affiliate networks therefore tend to promote products that are in
fierce competition with other similar products and for which the market
place is somewhat crowded. The implications of this for the affiliate
are far-reaching.
For a fuller review of this issue and all other aspects of Affiiliate
Marketing, you may wish to consult the Successful Affiliates Guide
ebook which is available for download via this website.
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