An Introduction To Affiliate Marketing

Since the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early 1990′s, the world has been introduced to many great changes in our daily lives. In addition to the WWW, many new devices beyond the first desktop computers have become available like the laptop computer and smart phones. The portability and power of smart phones allows us to stay connected all of the time, not just when we are in front of the computer. This connection keeps us in touch with people and information in such a way that we feel we always have the help we need, even in unfamiliar places and situations.

Businesses are greatly affected by this change in communication technology and wealth of information availability. Particularly, the publishing and broadcasting industries have been greatly affected. Many print newspapers are going out of business as people get their information online and even books are being made increasingly more available as eBooks, thanks in part to the popularity of devices like the Amazon Kindle and the iPad. Never before in human history has such an enormous change been effected in so little time. Surely there must be an opportunity to capitalize on this technology as it is still in it’s infancy.

With the start of Google Adsense I found my first way to make money online. I would set up websites that would attract visitors by focusing on a single topic and offering specialized information on it. I would then place Adsense ads on the site and when visitors clicked on the ads, I could receive a commission.

Affiliate marketing is a more direct approach and I can make bigger commissions as a result. With affiliate marketing you link straight to a vendor’s site using embedded HTML ‘code’ provided by the vendor. Clicks by visitors are tracked by the vendors’ system so you get paid on the customers you introduce. Its not all that complicated, but is does take some technical skill to get affiliate marketing done correctly.

And of course you can create your own product to sell on the internet and create a site to accomplish this. If you do, you have the added step of setting up shopping carts to take orders and collect the payment. Many years ago I would not do this because it took me too much time, but these days its easy. Did I say easy? Yes easy, or at least a lot easier thanks to PayPal.

These days it is much easier to create robust sites thanks to blog software like WordPress and content management systems like Joomla! and Drupal that have many available plug-ins that make it easy to add many eCommerce features among other things. I recommend WordPress for simple informative websites and Joomla! or Drupal if you require a more robust site like you would need for a company selling products on the web. In any case you will have the tools readily available to get started on your own affiliate marketing platform.

Learn more about affiliate marketing. Stop by www.affiliates-marketing.org where you can find out all about affiliate marketing tools and what it can do for you.