What is an Affiliate

Been an affiliate is about making money selling other people’s services or products using online advertising. Affiliate programs are a good way to make money with your site, the programs are normally free to join and there are thousands of products and services for you to select from. As an affiliate you promote the merchant’s products or services on your web site and earn some money each time somebody clicks on the affiliate link, visits the merchant’s site and proceeds to make a purchase.

One of the best things with affiliate programs is that there is absolutely no sales background required. In addition the merchant normally supplies you with the marketing material needed for the product such as a selection of image banners, text links and that all important product information. Another benefit is the minimal risk involved, if the product you are advertising is not working well for you then you can simply drop it and choose another, there are no long-term commitments binding you to an individual merchant.

When you select an affiliate program to join you are normally required to fill out a brief form detailing some information about yourself and your site. This will allow the retailer to establish that your site is appropriate to the products.

However promoting affiliate programs isn’t always as easy as it sounds, to be a successful affiliate you might need to sign-up with a lot of affiliate programs just so you can find out which merchants perform the best for your site. Success in affiliate marketing can take some time and hard work, but it’s once you have figured it out its well worth it. Your main responsibility as an affiliate is to advertise and create new sales for the merchant. You do not have to worry about the order processing and delivering the product to the customer, these are the duties of the merchant along with customer service support.

One thing you need to remember is that marketing affiliate programs is that its all about advertising the products, this means getting traffic to your site. If you don’t get any traffic coming to your site you probably won’t achieve any sales.


Author of this article is Andy Fullard.

If you like poker then consider becoming a poker affiliate or if you are from Europe check out these a UK affiliate programs