Affiliate marketing has become a very popular and profitable method in recent years, due to the high volume of business which is now being done online.
With online sales at its peak, affiliate marketing has been used by many companies to reach a larger customer base and push more volume.
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What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is selling a product or service for a company, and in return for selling the product or service you receive a commission, usually based off the total price of the product sold.
For example, if you sold a product for $100 and they gave a 10% commission for the sale, you would earn $10 for every product you sold. This way, the business profits from gaining more sales, and you profit by getting a percentage of those sales.
This has become such a popular method of earning, that the top affiliate marketers earn six figures through the process. Here are the steps to beginning affiliate marketing for yourself.
Find an Affiliate Program
In today’s era, there are an abundant amount of companies who have affiliate programs. Amazon and Ebay are two of the most popular, and there are also many different types of companies such as hosting companies who use the service.
Research
This step is an important part of the affiliate marketing process which can be easily overlooked.
It is important to research the company of the service or product, in order to ensure the commission will be paid and the product or service is legit, as you do not want to sell an ineffective product.
It is important to pay attention to detail, as many companies have different terms for how much commission they will give as well as how often the commission will be paid to you for your efforts.
Sign Up for the Program
Once you have done proper research on the company, you need to sign up for their affiliate program, and in some cases get approval.
There are different entry barriers for different companies, with some electing to allow your website to become an affiliate as long as it is legitimate, and others requiring a high volume of traffic to the site.
Market and Profit
Once the sign up process is complete, affiliate links are given by the company for placement on your website.
These affiliate links are able to track the amount of customers are coming from your site and ordering products for the company you have signed up with.
The profit will come when someone has clicked the link on your website and bought the product you are marketing on the website of the company you have signed up for.
Then, you gain a certain percentage of this purchase as an affiliate commission, typically up to 20% of the price of the product.
A method used by many affiliate marketers is product reviews, which display the advantages and disadvantages of the product as well as giving reason to purchase the product.
Use Your New Knowledge
After reading this article, you should know how to begin using affiliate marketing to gain income. The beauty of affiliate market is you do not need a product of your own to sell, and you can just profit from the sales of an existing product from another company.
Also, you can have multiple affiliate marketing programs going on at the same time allowing you to profit on different products. Affiliate marketing has incredible income potential, if used correctly.