Many of you are familiar with the word “Agents” or “Dealers”. In internet marketing terms the word “Affiliate” is used in common in place of “Agents”. Sometimes, the affiliates are also referred as “Publishers” as they do publishing of ads on behalf of the advertisers to make money through the internet. So many people use “Internet Marketing” and “Affiliate Marketing” interchangeably.
The job of the affiliate is to market the products of the advertisers in online by sending the visitors from his website to the advertiser’s website and make commission for the visit or lead or sales. The advertisers may be a provider of services or products. The affiliates can get commission by two popular methods viz., directly selling the advertiser’s product by getting an approval to place the ad links of the advertisers in the affiliate’s website. The advertisement links may be in the form of text or banner links provided by the advertisers. The advertisers pay for the leads or sales generated by the affiliates through a third party company. The third party company manages the affiliates by providing them a tracking code and giving them guidance in the form of the reports and collecting the payment from the advertiser and sending the commission to the affiliate. Clickbank.com and Paydotcom.com are some of the examples of such third parties, where the affiliates can join them for FREE and start working for the advertisers. In this method the affiliate NEED NOT own a website or blog, he can even send his affiliate link in email and forward them to his known people and start making money. But, some advertisers reject the application of the affiliate if he does not have a website. Sending spam mails to unknown people is prohibited and the advertiser may terminate the agreement for such activities. The affiliate must establish a prior contact with the receiver may to avoid such termination due to unsolicited mail complaint.
Next method of affiliate marketing is to make a website on some useful topic like this and by having an agreement with a contextual ad serving company, suitable advertisements are automatically placed according to the content of the website. The Publisher (affiliate) gets some commission for the visitors sent to the advertiser’s website. In this method, the affiliate may not have full control on the ads that appear on his website or blog. Google, Bidvertiser, Adbrite are some of the examples of contextual ad serving companies. The ads may be in the form of text links, graphical banners or videos.
There are many courses and ebooks available on the internet like “Affiliate Secret Weapon”, “Super Affiliate Hand Book”, “Day job killer” etc., to understand in depth about successful affiliate marketing. Affiliate can also do a search and may find some free download affiliate hand book , go through them and become an expert in affiliate marketing.
