For those of you who do not understand what affiliate marketing is, let me briefly explain. Affiliate marketing is nothing more than online referral. Most of the major-named money making programs online revolve around affiliate marketing in some way or form.

When you place a link to Amazon.com somewhere in the world wide web and someone clicks on your link to go to Amazon.com and ultimately purchases something, Amazon will give you a percentage of the sales made (in this example, Amazon usually gives someone between 3%-5% of the sales).

Simple! They design a special web address (link), which has your affiliate details embedded in the URL. This works well for both parties. Amazon wins a customer and you receive referral commission in exchange. But how does Amazon know that you made the referral?

Some affiliate programs have no cookies. Most are about a month. And some last for a year or even longer! So, all you have to do is get people to click your links that ultimately result in a purchase on the landing page website. Simple, huh? Many programs make it sound as simple as filling out a few Google Adwords advertisements. It is really not that simple, but making money this way is still very achievable! This is how I make a majority of my money.

So what makes affiliate marketing so great? Simple! You have no products, little customer interaction and require minimal attention once you get things going. This is why I originally got into this business and why I continue to do these ventures today. Plus, no product means no initial overhead product costs. Any money that is usually spent on affiliate marketing comes from PPCs (Pay-Per-Clicks, like Google Adwords or Yahoo Overture).

At the beginning, that will run you between $5-$10 per day. As sales increase, bidding increases and so do these costs (and your earnings!). What are the drawbacks? Well, one (which may actually be a benefit) is lack of control over HOW the product you are promoting is being sold. As an affiliate marketer, you are relying on the product to make the final sale, which is out of your control.

Many people (like I myself) do not have a masters or degree in marketing nor the time to learn it. Most products you promote probably have more qualified people than you or I to actually sell the final product. Well keep that in your mind when selecting products: Professional websites are important. As your affiliate marketing website continues to grow, so do you as a marketer. Products that are popular and have a lot of sales are excellent choices, too.

Again, with affiliate marketing, once you send someone to a website that you are promoting, you lose all trackability of that visitor. The answer is both yes and no. You will try to find ways to track your business and how people are buying. Finally, the one question that comes up rather often is: "Isn't affiliate marketing too competitive?"

Yes, affiliate marketing is competitive, no doubt about that. Is it TOO competitive? First of all, I am here and I make money in some of the most competitive markets on the internet (and I've been doing this for only about a year). Secondly, the world wide web is a VERY BIG PLACE! You really only need to be able to reach an extremely small fraction of the internet public to be VERY successful.

Finally, being successful is about being better than everyone else. If you are persistent, provide good content, look moderately professional and work on building traffic to your website, any market can be tapped, no matter how competitive it is. Where to begin? I always recommend that anyone who wants to do affiliate marketing should get them-self a good eBook or program on how to learn the fundamentals.

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