Anyone spending just 5 minutes looking for ways to make money online will likely run across the term ‘affiliate marketing’ in short order – probably several times, in fact. You’re probably asking yourself what is affiliate marketing, and can it really make you money – and lots of it? Allow me to give you a short introduction to the world of affiliate marketing.

In the normal order of things, to make money you need to produce something. An new idea, a website, a product, a service – or a combination of the 4. With affiliate marketing at it’s most basic, all you are doing is directing people to products they are looking for and likely to buy – products created/owned by someone else – and then you take a cut of any sales made.

Website Promoting

You can do this by setting up your own website promoting someone else’s product, getting search engine traffic and making sales that way, or even purchasing clicks through a program like Google AdWords and sending traffic that way.

Affiliate marketing can run direct through a specific website, or may be part of a third party broker such as ClickBank, Click2Sell, Commission Junction, Chitika, etc.

What is great about affiliate marketing is that a business and product has already been set up ready for you; although you don’t own it, you get a cut for customers you refer who make a purchase. If it’s a straight forward affiliate setup, you don’t deal with customers at all.

It’s almost as if all you are doing is standing outside on the street, using various means to get interested shoppers to go in the shop and being paid for every person who buys. And, the more interested people you can get into the shop, you guessed it – the more chance you have of someone buying, making you money.

Affiliate earnings are known as commissions, and the payment of such commissions are handled differently depending on each network – so make sure you fully understand how you will be paid. Some send cheques, some give the option of sending direct to your bank account. Some pay weekly, fortnightly, monthly, or only pay when you have reached a minimum amount.

When you start affiliate marketing, you are known as the ‘affiliate’ and the person whose product you are promoting is known as the ‘vendor’.

You may be wondering what use is affiliate marketing when you can build a product and webpage yourself? Take a look at the Affiliate Marketing Blogger homepage to see an example of some of the biggest benefits over traditional marketing.