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Over the past three days I have been documenting what I’ve been doing online, because there’s been a lot of questions about affiliate marketing in my inbox. People have been asking me if affiliate marketing really works, and also if you can make money with it quick and easy.
With the economy the way it’s been for a long time, people are looking for alternate ways to generate income online. Not only has the economy made people look for alternatives, but also their own “boring” jobs.
So many of us are tired of working a regular 9 to 5, and we’ve finally had enough. I understand, that’s why I wanted to make a guide about affiliate marketing and what I know about it. Let’s call it:
The Ultimate Mini-Guide to Becoming a Wealthy Affiliate Marketer
I want to make this as easy as possible, so I made it like a mini ebook for you, so here are the Contents you will find in this Guide:
1. What is Affiliate Marketing?
2. How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
3. Understanding the Pay Structure
4. Affiliate Networks. Let’s Make Money!
So let’s begin at the beginning…
What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is probably the best way for a beginner to start making money online for a few reasons. One, you don’t have to have your own product to sell. And you don’t have to deal with shipping or handling anything. All you do is refer people to other people’s products or services. So basically, affiliate marketing is the promotion of others people’s products in which you make a commission percentage when they either visit other people’s website or when they buy something from that person’s site.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
I am going to use myself as an example. Say I buy a product that I like, let’s say an MP3 player. I then decide to write a review on my blog and link to the site where I bought it from, say Amazon(the MP3 seller), so if somebody stops by this review and decides to click on that link, then decide to buy that MP3 player, and the company makes all of the money. Or I could have joined their affiliate program if they had one, and gotten part of the sale of the affiliate sale.
Four benefits of affiliate marketing:
- You never have to handle any orders
- Don’t have to deal with billing
- Don’t have to worry about the delivering or shipping of products
- Customer support is not your problem
Everything is always tracked online, you just log into your affiliate dashboard and check the status of your sales and payments. You typically get paid weekly or monthly, that will depend on the affiliate network.
Simply put this is the best way to run a business online. You don’t have inventory and you don’t have to put thousands of dollars into an office or equipment.
Understanding the Pay Structure: Three Common Ways You Get Paid
I am sure you’re familiar with Amazon.com; if you’re not, you’ve been living under a rock. no offense. Amazon’s affiliate program is among the most “successful programs online” to this day, and affiliate marketing has helped them be where they are today.
Let’s break the three structures down:
Pay Per Lead: Basically you get compensated every time someone takes action on the site you’re advertising. For example: filling out surveys or just filling out a form request for a free trial offer. Commissions range from $1-60, sometimes even more, for programs like weight loss trials or dating sites with a credit card submit.
Pay Per Click: If you know about Google, they have a program called Adsense, where you get paid if you have a block somewhere on your site displaying different text ads relevant to your content. Google shares a percentage of the income from the click with you. It’s becoming less and less popular due to having to need a lot of clicks to make a decent living or income out of it. Most affiliate programs are Pay Per Lead or Pay Per Sale, which is what I am going to discuss next.
Pay Per Sale: As the title says it all, you get paid for every purchase or sale you make from your referral. It usually just pays a percentage of the final sale. Amazon’s commission structure can be categorized as (PPS) as you get paid for every purchase thats made in their site.
Let’s Make Some Money:
Is this part I’ll talk about:
- What an affiliate network is
- What are the benefits of using them
- And I’ll give you some actionable steps to get started making money online
What is an Affiliate Network?
- An affiliate network is basically the middle man between you (the affiliate) and the merchant (Company).
The reason for this is so that there is legitimacy for both sides. But the main reason is so that you can find a variety of offers in one place and facilitate the promotion of the merchants product or services.
The nicest thing is that they keep track of leads and payments, that way you only have to focus on promotion. Usually it’s only a fraction they take from the commission to take care of this for you 10-30%.
The Benefits
- It’s the easiest and quickest way to find an offer to start promoting and making money.
But not just this, they also give you support, what I mean is, that you get your own affiliate manager that can help you pick offers that are actually converting and that are going to bring you the most money, since it’s a win-win situation, if you make money, so does he. You also start getting paid higher as your volume starts increasing. And last, you only get one paycheck and not a dozen from all the different offers that you promote.
Other extras:
There’s always a contest going on every week or everyday as incentives to motivate you to bring in more volume to certain offers, bonus monthly earnings, usually a small percentage and of course vacations and rewards to encourage you to increase your performance.
Affiliate Networks you can get started with TODAY!!
