The Easy Way To Getting Started In Affiliate Marketing
People are always looking for ways of making extra money, and one way that is ever more popular is Internet Marketing or Affiliate Marketing. The information contained in this introductory article is designed to be of use to those that are new to Affiliate Marketing as well as those that are familiar with it.
If you are new to Affiliate Marketing, you will no doubt be experiencing information overload, as you try to make sense of the vast minefield of information that is the world of Affiliate Marketing. Anyone venturing into this field for the first time needs clear guidance to avoid the many pitfalls and increase their chances of success. This article will attempt to do that by explaining some of the fundamentals of Affiliate Marketing and presenting a clear course of action that will enable a Newbie to get off to a running start, at little or no cost.
If you are an existing affiliate, perhaps struggling to get your Internet Business moving, then you should find this information equally useful, perhaps in pointing out past mistakes and giving direction to your efforts.
What is Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is essentially a profit-sharing business arrangement between a website owner, known as an affiliate, and an online business, known as the vendor or merchant. The affiliate places advertisements on his website(s) to sell the merchant’s goods and services and/or direct possible clients, known as prospects, to the merchant’s website. Any profits arising from purchases made by the prospects are shared by the website owner and the merchant.
In order to become an affiliate you have to join an affiliate program. Choosing an affiliate programme is a task that can seem very daunting, as thousands of affiliate programmes exist on the internet. A popular example of an affiliate program is that provided my Amazon. When you register as an Amazon Associate (Amazon call their affiliates Associates) Amazon provide you with a unique ID that enables you to earn a commission every time someone buys an Amazon product through your website. The beauty of being an Amazon affiliate is that you have no products to sell yourself. There is no need to buy and keep stock. Amazon take care of everything from providing you with the necessary software tools to set up your affiliate links on your website, to processing the orders and shipping the products when buyers make a sale through your website.
Digital Information Products
Although affiliate programs like Amazon are very popular, probably the best place to begin as an affiliate is promoting Digital Information Products in the form of eBooks and Software. Most of these information products are “How to” books that are in great demand from the general public – a Dog Training Manual is an example of a Digital Information Product that may be in demand from dog owners. The info products are written by authors, known as vendors, who are looking for people to help sell them. The people that help to sell the products the affiliates and a similar arrangement exists to that described for Amazon in that anyone wishing to make money by promoting these info products has to sign up to an affiliate program to earn a commission. The added attraction of info products is they are delivered instantly upon purchase simply by downloading from the vendor’s website and they pay much higher commisions – as much as 75% of the product price, compared with Amazon who pay around 5% per sale.
The Clickbank Marketplace
Clickbank is the world’s largest provider of digital products. If you visit the Clickbank Marketplace, you will find thousands of products grouped into categories ranging from Self Improvement to Home and Garden, Parenting and Families, Health and Fitness, Sport and Recreation, Finance, Technology, and a whole lot more. So, to get started in Affiliate Marketing, the first thing to do is sign up with Clickback as an affiliate. Once signed up with Clickbank you would then choose a product to promote from the Clickbank Marketplace. Depending on your interests you might, for example decide to promote “Master The Perfect Golf Swing” or “The Migraine & Head Ache Solution,” or “Dog training In 15 Minutes A Day,” to name but three products from the 10,000 available on Clickbank.
Product Promotion
The essence of affiliate marketing is to place the product or service on offer in front of as many potential buyers as possible in the hope that a proportion of them will buy the product. In practice, this involves driving as much relevant traffic as possible to the point where the product is presented. Relevant traffic is people that have an interest in the product you are promoting, which means they are more likely to buy. Therefore, in relation to products that are traded on the internet, be they physical products such as those sold on Amazon, or digital products, once signed up with Clickbank and a product chosen, a number of avenues are available for the would-be affiliate to drive relevant traffic to their chosen Digital Product. Now, the whole subject is of how to build a successful Affiliate Marketing business is beyond the scope of this introductory article but includes building a dedicated website or blog, email marketing, article marketing, online advertisement, social media (Twitter, Facebook and others), link building, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and a whole lot more.
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