In the past few years, affiliate marketing has become one of the best-known methods of making money online. Unlike traditional retailing, affiliate marketing offers the opportunity to make cash without being required to stock or ship merchandise, which makes the cost of entry into the business affordable for just about anyone. It's even possible to make money online without having a Website. While it is not necessarily easy to earn money as an affiliate, it can be simpler than just about any other Internet business model.
Affiliate marketing is a system whereby an individual partners with the seller or manufacturer of a product to advertise that product on behalf of the seller. If that individual assists in making a sale, he or she gets a portion of the sales price for the effort.
There are three primary ways to earn money as an affiiiate:
The pay per clickmodel. A common example of this would be Google's Adsense ads. Affiliates can elect to have Adsense ads put on their Website. Those ads will be related to the page's own content. If the page is about cars, Google will place car-related ads on the page. If a visitor clicks on one of the ads, the owner of the Website receives a payment of anywhere from a penny to a few dollars. The Website owner is effectively working as an affiliate for both the advertiser and Google, as Google is earning money from the advertiser and the Site owner is receiving money from Google.
The pay per sale model may be the most popular model on the Web. With pay per sale, the seller or retailer gives the affiliate a coded hyperlink that has identifying information for the affiliate and connects to the seller's Website. The affiliate can send the link to a mailing list in an e-mail message or list it on a Website. If a visitor clicks on the link and buys the product, the affiliate receives part of the sales price.
The pay per lead model is interesting in that the customer need not buy anything for the affiliate to get paid. Pay per lead is common in the insurance industry, where companies will pay commissions simply for providing visitors who seek insurance quotes. Affiliates receive a hyperlink, just as in the pay per sale model, but get paid if a customer applies for a free estimate. The payment is smaller than for the pay per sale model, but pay per lead can be quite profitable anyway.
There are additional methods of earning money in online marketing, but the three listed above are the best-known. All three systems are useful, but each one is suited to different kinds of business. The smart marketer will try to take advantage of all three methods to maximize earnings potential.
Copyright 2008 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier owns Mafioso-Marketing.net, a site that sells the
Mafioso Marketing ebook, and AffiliateCashSecrets-Exposed.com, a site with a review of Derrick VanDyke's
Affiliate Cash Secrets.
