Earn Money Online With Affiliate Marketing

Many individuals are going into online businesses and online marketing which is known as Internet Marketing (IM) to make money online to supplement main income or depending on IM as a primary source of income.

Why? Because internet marketing offers a lot of benefits! Listed below are some of them:

1.The world is your oyster, you can market your products to anyone who is on the internet. This equates to a wider market base which means more profits.
2.It is much cheaper to set up a business on the internet than it is to set up an actual business establishment.
3.You do not need to have your own products to get started in internet marketing, Many people make a healthy income by just selling other people’s products. This normally requires setting up an agreement with an online retailer or merchant, and once its done, you can immediately start making money by selling the merchant’s or the retailer’s products.

The method of selling other people’s products online is know as affiliate marketing, it is the fastest growing way people make money online. By definition, affiliate marketing is an agreement between both the internet marketer (who wants to sell products) and the online merchant or retailer (who has products to sell)

To start making money online with affiliate marketing, one simply has to sign up as an affiliate with a merchant offering affiliate programs or join an affiliate network where they have many affiliate programs in different categories that you can pick and promote. One such popular network is Clickbank. Many of these affiliate networks are free but some requires you to pay a nominal membership fee.

Some affiliate programs or network will require you to submit your website’s address and description as a verification that your website is active and relevant to their products. Others do not require this verification process and you are free to choose the affiliate program you want to market.

The merchant normally provides his affiliates with banners, text ads or special html codes (linking to the merchant’s site). The affiliates with then place these on his website and earn commissions when targeted traffic or sales are directed to the merchant’s web site.

How do youmake money online with affiliate marketing? It depends on the type of affiliate marketing program you’ve signed up for. Most affiliate marketing programs compensate their affiliates in different ways:

Pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-sale (PPS), or pay-per-lead (PPL). In pay-per-click affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever he directs traffic to the merchant’s site. PPS and PPL affiliate marketing programs work rather differently. In PPS, the affiliate only gets paid when his referral converts into an actual sale. In typical PPS affiliate programs, the affiliate would usually get a commission for each conversion. PPL affiliate programs work the same way, although affiliates are paid a fixed fee whenever his referral converts into a lead for the company.

Some affiliate marketing programs are two-tier programs, wherein the affiliate is also allowed to recommend other affiliates to the merchant. In such affiliate programs, the affiliate would not only be paid for the traffic or sales that he would direct to the merchant’s site but also for the traffic or sales directed by the affiliates who signed up with the program through his recommendation.

Yet another way of earning more profits with affiliate marketing is through residual affiliate programs. Residual affiliate programs are affiliate programs where the affiliate gets paid a number of times for as long as the merchant keeps the customer the affiliate has referred to his site. One form of residual program gets the affiliate paid a commission every time the referred customer purchases something on the merchant’s site. Another form of residual affiliate program gets the affiliate paid a percentage every month for as long as the company keeps the referred customer.

There are many ways one can make money online and affiliate marketing is the most popular method. How much money you can make also depends on your internet marketing and SEO skills. I will be covering the two topics in future articles.