Description

There are many different ways to makemoneyonline but affiliate marketing consistently ranks as one ofthemost popular. Take a look at any internet marketing oronlinebusiness forum and you’ll see countless numbers of peopleaskingquestions about affiliate marketing and how they can makemoneyfrom it.

So - what is affiliate marketing?
In short affiliate marketing is where you recommend otherpeople’sproducts – and in return the owner of the product gives youapercentage of the sale price if one of the people you havereferredactually buys the product or service.

Affiliate marketing is very attractive because it’s prettyeasyto get started. There’s no need to create or source productsofyour own to sell - all you have to do is get people to clickonyour affiliate link and buy the product, and thus there’slittleupfront investment cost and no time consuming productstocreate.

In reality, affiliate marketing is just one part of mostpeople’sonline business. If you want to be really successfulonline it’sgenerally accepted that you need to create (or source)and sell yourown products, rather than JUST being an affiliatemarketer. Thereare of course exceptions to this rule however andit is indeedpossible to earn a very healthy income just fromaffiliatepromotions. Most successful internet marketers make ahell of a lotof money from affiliate marketing!

Affiliate marketing works well for both sides of theparty…
Product owners obviously need to get traffic to their websitesinorder to be able to sell products. And whilst a fair chunk ofthistraffic will be generated themselves, it makes sense for themtoget other people to also promote their products andwebsitesbecause it will result in lots of extra sales for littleextraeffort on their part. All they have to do is set up anaffiliateprogram and give people a commission as an incentive – andthenthey can watch as their affiliates do the hard work and drivethetraffic for them.

So, whilst it’s true that as an affiliate you’ll be doing mostofthe hard work to drive the traffic, remember that as anaffiliateyou didn’t have to do any of the hard work the productowneroriginally had to do in the first place.
But the above should give you some insight into why you shouldalsosell your own products as well as being an affiliate.

So how much can you expect to earn as an affiliate?

Commissions vary widely from affiliate scheme toaffiliatescheme. The most common idea is to pay the affiliatecommission asa percentage of the total sale price. This can be aslittle as 1%and as much as 100%.
Yes, some products pay you 100% commission – and you mightbewondering why this is the case. The simple answer of course isthatthe product owner wants to make their affiliate schemeveryattractive to potential affiliates so that he or she canpersuadeas many people as possible to promote it. By offering100%commission on a low-priced front end product they will be abletoget lots of affiliates on board and thus drive lots of peopleintotheir sales funnel. They’ll ultimately earn more money bymakinglots of sales of their back end products.

Typically it works like this. They have a low priced productforsale on the front end - let’s say it’s an eBook or shortreportpriced at $4.95. They offer people 100% commission on thisproduct,but then when people actually buy it they will also seeother ‘backend’ products that are priced at a higher level. Thesewill eitherpay a lower commission to affiliates (e.g. 40%) or evennocommission at all…

The product owner knows that by offering 100% commission onthefront end product they will ultimately make more moneybecausetheir affiliates will drive much more traffic into theirsalesfunnel than if they were, say, offering 50% on the frontendproduct. They make no money upfront (and even lose money insomecases) but the extra income they make on the backendultimatelyearns them more money.