INTERNET MARKETING - AFFILATE PROGRAMMES

 

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a new twist on an old concept – commission-based sales. At its simplest, it is a partnership between a merchant and a salesperson where the merchant rewards the salesperson, or affiliate, based on some measure of performance – usually a sale, but in some cases for leads or website traffic.
The first mainstream affiliate marketing system on the internet was launched by Amazon.com, offering Amazon "associates" the opportunity to receive a commission for each book they sold for the company. Since then, many thousands of companies have created their own affiliate programs, encouraging online publishers and salespeople to earn commissions through their partnerships.
There are many publishing and sales professionals who are successful affiliate marketers, but they are certainly not the only people participating in the industry. There are also many "amateur" affiliates – people who build a website, or create an online newsletter, or in some cases simply email their friends and recommend a product or service. In many instances, it's no different to recommending a particular brand or store – except that if somebody follows the affiliate's advice, they're rewarded for it.

Why Affiliate Marketing?

Since the internet is one of the media with which to view the world and interact with people without getting up from one’s seat, it has become one of the most important channels with which to sell a merchant’s products and wares.
This is the reason why affiliate marketing thrives as a result of the internet’s popularity. The products and wares which the internet markets get the necessary exposure needed to sell well. This is where the fact that affiliate marketing is a lucrative business comes in. What is intended to be sold is sold because the internet is the best place to sell all these merchandise without the merchant giving too much of an effort to sell them per se.
Affiliate marketing may involve a number of different strategies and techniques, from building entire online storefronts offering the affiliate merchant's products, adding some form of advertisement to an existing website, to something as simple as making recommendations in an email and including a special affiliate link that ensures that the merchant credits them for the sale.
The growth of affiliate marketing is constantly increasing, as new merchants discover the value of increasing the size of their sales force by creating partnerships with online publishers. This is especially true of merchants whose products or services may appeal to a particular niche market. How better to become established within that niche than by working with companies and individuals who already know the market because they're part of it?

Making Money With Affiliate Programs

Most of us dream about the kind of life where we make our own hours and have time for the important things in life, don’t we? How about earning an income that we can really be proud of based on our performance? Let’s face it, for most of us, work is something that takes away from our days, not add to them.
Perhaps that’s why so many people are turning towards affiliate marketing for extra income. Affiliate marketing was responsible for billions of dollars worth of revenue over the past year, and much of that centered on the all-important holiday shopping season. When you are ready make money with affiliate programs and become a successful affiliate marketer there are a few things you need to keep in mind.