Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice where a business rewards one or more affiliates for each customer delivered by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Sometimes just delivering a visitor is enough for a reward.
Affiliate marketing, using one website to drive traffic to another, is a marketing model that is frequently overlooked by advertisers. Search engines, e-mail, and website syndication get much more attention from online retailers. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in online retailers' marketing strategies.
The concept paying commission to someone who has referred business predates affiliate marketing and the Internet. The practice of affiliate marketing for ecommerce happened almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web in November 1994.
Amazon.com was one of the early pioneers and launched its associate program in July 1996. Amazon affiliates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page and get paid for sales resulting from their actions.
Affiliate marketing may be a great marketing concept for your business in two different ways:
- As a business owner who wants performance-based advertising
- As an affiliate who wants an easy-to-set-up marketing business
As an advertiser, this "pay-for-performance" model is actually the modern version of the "finders'-fee" model, where individuals who refer new clients or customers to your business are compensated. As an advertiser, you only pay your affiliates when the new client introduction results in a sale or a lead. This is the ultimate low-risk, high-reward environment for both you and your affiliates.
To become an affiliate has been called an entrepreneur's dream. It is possible to be in hundreds, and even thousands, of different businesses at one time with almost no investment other than your time. You can sell gardening tools, American Idol CDs, Walmart merchandise, information products, software or Dell computers at one time and you can sell at any time - day or night. You can sell while you are getting a haircut and while you are on vacation.
No other business model offers this flexibility.
There are basically three ways to find affiliate programs to promote for your website:
- Affiliate program directories
- Large affiliate networks that represent numerous advertisers
- Advertisers' website. Websites that offer an affiliate program usually have a link titled "affiliate program", "affiliates" or "referral program", usually in the footer or the "About" section of the website.
If there is no such links it still possible that they do not want to publicize their affiliate program. You may want to contact the website owner directly to find out if he offers an affiliate program.
Here are some of the advantages of starting your own affiliate business:
- Very low start-up cost
- No inventory
- No products to ship
- No payments to collect
- No selling required
- No customer support headaches
- No employees
- Business can be operated from anywhere Internet connection is available
- Can be operated with time saving systems and automation
- Huge upside potential
