A GLIMPSE OF AFFILIATE MARKETING

Affiliate marketing is an "evergreen" way of making money online.

Internet marketing strategies and 'fads' come and go, but affiliate

marketing remains eternally popular and for good reason.... there's

good money to be made as an affiliate if you know what you're

doing - and it's relatively easy to get started.

Since you're reading this report I'll assume that you know what

affiliate marketing is. If you don't then it's extremely simple - you

promote other people's products using your unique affiliate link

(they can be digital or physical products or service) and then you

get paid a commission whenever somebody you've referred

purchases something.

The great thing about affiliate marketing is that you don't have to

worry about things such as product creation or buying in products.

There doesn't have to be an investment when you become an

affiliate marketer - you simply sign up to get your affiliate link from

the product vendor and away you go. You might choose to invest

money in promoting your links of course but that's totally optional.

Affiliate marketing works because it solves two key problems in

one go:

1. Product vendors always need more customers and thus they

use affiliates to help them find them - for free.

2. People who don't have products of their own to sell can promote

products as an affiliate and they instantly have something to sell

with very little effort.

Of course the reality is that most affiliates are also product vendors

and vice versa. Any successful marketer will both have their own

products AND promote other people's as an affiliate. But if you're

just getting started you can start off by being an affiliate-only and

then move into creating and selling your own products as you build

up experience.

How much is it possible to earn as an affiliate marketer?

Affiliate commissions can be anywhere between 1% and 100% of

the purchase price. You tend to find that physical products pay

lower percentage commissions whilst digital products such as

eBooks and courses will pay a higher commission. This is simply

because the digital vendor has very little costs involved to run their

business and thus they can afford to be more generous with their

commissions.

In addition digital vendors tend to have other products inside a

sales funnel, which will often be of much higher value. They might

offer you 100% commissions on the "front-end" product, for

example - but that might only sell for $5, whereas their "back-end"

product might sell for $97. In this case they might only offer you

25% commision on the back-end product or even non at all. They

are basically using the front-end product to attract as many people

into their sales funnel as possible - and offering 100% commission

to affiliates is a key way of helping them do that.

How quickly do you get paid?

Some products offer instant commissions which are paid straight

into your Paypal account as soon as the sale is made. Other

affiliate schemes make you wait until the end of a set period (say 1

month) before they pay you anything - and it sometimes takes into

account things like refund periods. After all, product vendors don't

want to pay you a commission and then have to later refund the

customer because they would obviously lose out.

If you're new to affiliate marketing then you might be wondering

how product vendors know which affiliate sent them the sale, since

they might have hundreds of different affiliate promoting their

products.

The simple answer is that every affiliate is given a unique affiliate

link (URL) to use. These links are tracked by cookies, so they

always know exactly who sent them the sale and when. In many

cases cookies can last for months, so even if you send somebody

to the vendors website and they don't make a purchase initially but come back 3 months later and buy something you'll still get paid.

Pretty cool, eh?

Selecting products to promote

There is certainly no shortage of products out there to promote,

whether you're interesting in digital or physical.

Actually, that brings up an interesting debate... Is it better to

promote physical products or digital products such as eBooks,

courses, videos etc?

There are advantages and drawbacks to both - and it will depend

on things like where your particular interests lie and what niche

you are in. For example, if you're in one of the hobby niches then

you'll probably find no shortage of physical products to promote -

but if you are in a niche such as internet marketing then digital

could be the way to go. Many people prefer digital products

because you often get paid more generous commissions and they

are often paid to you immediately - and that's what we are going to

concentrate on primarily in this report. However if you're in a niche

such as diet or weight loss for example then there might be an

opportunity to promote both digital and physical products.

Now we've got that over with it's time to introduce you to some of

the main affiliate programs and discuss some of the benefits and

drawbacks of each.