Affiliate programs have been around for quite a while. When they started, they were kind of clumsy and hard to organize. Companies would start and stop, which would mean the person putting those links on their sites had allot of potential work involved keeping things up to date. Now, they are much more streamlined and mainstream. If you knew what to look for, you would find that unless you typed in the exact url for a company, you were using an affiliate link to reach it...and someone, not you, was making a commission on what amounted to a referral. I've been using affiliate programs for years, and I can tell you they can be very good income streams and today, they can involve allot less work than they used to. They are truly a great example of a win/win/win situation. The buyer gets an easy link to a product or service to buy what they want/need, the website that placed the link gets a commission just for making the link to the product or service available to the buyer, and the store gets a sale from what amounts to free advertising...since they don't pay for placing the link, only after a sale has been made. Is it any wonder that almost any store you can think of uses affiliate programs to advertise?
How & Why Affiliate Marketing works
Affiliate Marketing doesn't have to be "in your face". In fact, it works much better if it isn't. Just write a blog or web page, and insert the link in the form of text or ad on that same page on the product or service you discussed on that page. Just that simple. The reader enjoys the post, wants to follow through with more info (you can get links to book stores), or is ready to buy that product. You just provided them the means to do so...and will get paid for it.
How do affiliate programs work, and why are they so popular? Affiliate programs are a combination of companies advertising on a client's site for free, and the client getting paid for everything that a visitor to that site buys from the companies that advertise on the client's site. The way the companies advertise is by providing coded links that access the company's website that the client puts on their website. Since the upfront marketing cost to do this for the company is next to nothing (they only pay the directory that manages the links), and the traditional advertising costs don't exist, the companies will pay commissions to the client that brings buyers to the company site by means of these coded links. The coding is an embedded code in the link that tells the company whose website the lead/sale came from and who to pay the commission. It costs nothing for the client to put the link on their site. How cool is this.
It is truly a passive income source
The client doesn't deal with the buyer, or returns, or complaints, or anything other than cashing the check.
Their are many examples of this, and almost any company you can think of has a program set up to do this. All you need is a site, that doesn't have any illegal activity on it, or anything else that the companies would not want to be associated with, and you can usually put a link on your site for that company.
Commissions vary on the company, some are very low, and some are very high. One of the best examples of this are the online shopping malls. They are nothing more than a large directory of affiliate programs all on one site. IF you own the mall, you get the commissions from every sale made using the links provided on that mall site. The best example of this is Aisle19. This is an example of Affiliate links on steroids. You can join as a member for free, there are no membership fees of any kind. No maximums or minimums, and they give cash back on all purchases. If you own the mall you get all the benefits of the membership, but you also get a commission on everything that you and others buy from your mall. To own your own mall, there is a very small monthly charge, that you should be able to easily offset by the savings and commissions you get each month. Think about the income potential...especially during seasonal buying periods.
How and where to use them
You can use these links on your website, or in email, or in eBooks or articles. The possibilities are endless. A great place to use them is on your blog. Post a new article, and have a link to a product or service that you get a commission from right on the same page...and all of this cost you nothing to provide. You'll need to learn how to use Social Media, like FaceBook, blogs, LinkedIn, eZines, writing articles and more to attract readers to your sites/blogs, but it doesn't get any easier than that.
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