Posted by PB31 Woman on November 26, 2009 at 4:21pm
Many people often ask “What is Affiliate Marketing?” Let’s first define the word -the word “affiliate” refers to the act of affiliating; state of being affiliated or associated.Affiliation Marketing is connecting advertisers with buyersWhat is Affiliate Marketing?Affiliate marketing can be described as promoting the goods or services of a business through your website. This type of marketing involves you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your blog to another site where they then buy something.Another way of affiliate marketing is when you earn an amount for referring a visitor who takes some kind of action – for example when they sign up for something and give an email address, where they complete a survey, where they leave a name and address etc.You can be compensated with a percentage of a sale or a fixed rate per conversion. The conversions are generally tracked when you use a link with a code only being used by you embedded into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions come from (usually by cookies). Sometimes an advertiser gives a publisher a ‘coupon code’ for the customer to use that helps to track conversions.Affiliate Marketing and BloggingIf you are BLOGGER affiliate marketing can be very profitable. The advantage of affiliate marketing as a blogger is that you have built a trust between you and your readers. I’ve found that as this trust deepens that readers are more likely to follow the recommendations that a blogger makes.It would be unfair to you if I didn’t mention that there is a negative side to affiliate marketing. The negative side to affiliate marketing is if you promote the wrong product the trust you worked so hard to get can be broken.Not Easy Money – But Lucrative!It has been proven that affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative. I must inform you that although this can be a lucrative business its not EASY money. Many people that have tried to make money do very little because they rely on numerous factors including:• traffic (high traffic helps a lot)• finding relevant products• finding quality products• building trust with your readers• having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’• you being able to write good sales copy (and more)The risk associated with affiliate marketing is if you push too hard or promote products of a low quality you can actually burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand.It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs. Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote – other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach.
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