Affiliate Marketing, A Viable Internet Business Model Part I

Affiliate marketing is sometimes described in various ways but there is actually only one meaning. Affiliate marketing is a huge part of Internet business as we know it. Affiliate marketing is a combined effort between a merchant and an affiliate or person who wants to vend the merchant’s product or service. Affiliate marketing has been time tested and demonstrated to be an low cost, lucrative, and stable form of business.

It has become more popular in recent times as it is a great way for merchants to grow a team of salespeople selling their product or service without the merchant having to spend a ton of money on advertising. Every day, hundreds, even thousands of people are discovering affiliate marketing and see it as a valid form of making extra money or even replacing their jobs and careers. Unfortunately, many of these people fail to realize what affiliate marketing really is and thus make expensive mistakes.

It is safe to say that affiliate marketing, although highly efficient and lucrative, has often been misunderstood. A frequent misunderstanding about affiliate marketing is “selling”, even though selling is a crucial part of affiliate marketing and also the life blood of any business. Another misconception associated with affiliate marketing is that it is frequently associated with “advertising”.

Promoting and advertising a product or service is an important part of any business but these are only two facets of a complex formula. Affiliate marketing is a great deal like a retail store. In essence, the retailer is an affiliate for each product or service he/she sells in his/her store. The retailer associates with the manufacturer of the individual products he/she is selling then spends his/her money advertising “The Store” and individual products in order to get traffic and ultimately, sales.

There are many affiliate programs on the market today. Many are individual merchants and still a lot fit in to networks like ClickBank and Commission Junction. The individual merchants are accountable for handling all the details of the affiliate program and the relationships between affiliates. Whereas, with the affiliate networks, there are many merchants listed in one location allowing one to associate with several merchants at one time. The networks also make doing business easier for both the merchant and affiliate. The networks take care of keeping track of all sign-ups, sales, and commission payouts. Truthfully, affiliate networks are a very simple and expedient vehicle for a person new to affiliate marketing to get started.

The affiliate networks are probably best described as the Sams or Wal-Marts of affiliate programs. They present a vast array of affiliate programs in one site where the individual merchant may only have just a few affiliate products to choose from. Some affiliate marketers will use a grouping of the two as they increase their efforts to more than one affiliate program. The networks do not offer all programs that are in existence thus the fact that you will always have individual merchants out there.

Affiliate networks are good for both the merchant and the affiliate. After you sign up, as either a merchant offering a product or service for sale or an affiliate offering to sell products and/or services, the network virtually takes care of all the particulars. The merchant pays a small fee to the network when his/her product or service is sold and then the network pays out the payment for the sale to the affiliate.

The benefits for a merchant is that he/she does not have to spend as much trying to promote their affiliate program because the network will place the merchant in categories within the network which allows affiliates to search for programs by categories of interests. Since thousands of people visit these sites in search of affiliate programs the merchant can potentially gain a huge sales force in a relatively short amount of time.

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