Affiliate Marketing Basics
Before we discuss how to create a blueprint for affiliate marketing success, let's be clear about what affiliate marketing is, and what it is not.
Simply put, affiliate marketing is promoting a product that someone else has created, and if the product is sold using your promotions, then the publisher of that product pays you a commission or a percentage of what was sold.
Affiliate marketing is NOT multilevel marketing (MLM) or network marketing.
And let's bust this myth right now: Products sold through affiliates are not more expensive to the consumer or buyer.
In fact, for most products, the price of a product is no different if purchased through an affiliate link or not.
Because the publisher of a product doesn't have to spend money on advertising that may or may not work, and only have to pay affiliates, product prices can actually be lower because of the power of affiliate marketing.
The focus of teaching in this website will be affiliate marketing for information publishers - those publishers that create information products.
Information products can be sold and delivered to the buyer through a digital download such as a pdf ebook. Information products can also be delivered to the buyer through physical products such as a printed book DVDs.
Merchants who sell physical, tangible products such as cameras, computers, furniture, nutrition products, and exercise equipment, also use affiliate marketing as a strategy to help sell their product. And if you go check out Commission Junction or ShareaSale, you will find many businesses participating in affiliate marketing.
I can only teach what I know.
And what I know is that selling information products (and making affiliate commissions) is easier than selling hard physical products.
Why?
Let me ask you a question - what do people use the internet for?
Information!
People setting behind computers, your future buyers, are on the internet right now looking for information.
They have a problem, and they go to the internet to find information on how to solve that problem. Information products solve that "I have to have an answer now" immediacy.
So if you are a new to affiliate marketing, stick with promoting information products.
After you have cut your teeth at getting good at promoting information products, then use the same blueprint strategies for promoting physical products.
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make an extra income.
Once you have everything all set up and ready to go (your blueprint or marketing systems in place), you can begin making an income from your efforts.
In a nutshell, this is how affiliate marketing works:
When a business (information publisher) decides that they would like to have some help selling their product or service, they join an affiliate program. When they do this, they are allowing others (affiliates) to also sign up and sell their products or a particular service that they are offering.
The affiliates have multiple ways that they can market the service or the product. And we will get into that later.
The publisher will give all of their affiliates a unique ID number that they can use in their links.
This unique ID is tracked throughout the sales process. That way the publisher can see who the sale came from when a sale is made. The affiliate is rewarded for the sale according the compensation plan.
This is performance based marketing.
The product owner or publisher only pays or compensates the affiliate for real results.
In affiliate marketing, you only get paid for performance.
Make sales - you get paid.
If you don't make sales, you don't get paid!
So, drive targeted internet traffic to a publisher's website, and if that traffic converts to sales, you will be rewarded!
However, if you don't drive much internet traffic, or targeted traffic, and there are little to no sales, then you make nothing. In fact, if you have spent a lot of money on internet marketing tools or PPC, you might even make less than zero!
Affiliate marketing is something that anyone can learn.
But it does take effort on your part. And it takes finding a good affiliate program, a good product, and then following a blueprint for success.
> > Continue to Affiliate Marketing Programs
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