Affiliate marketing is advertising for someone else in exchange for a cut of the sales you generate. Youre sharing your traffic for a price. Its a great way to capitalize on the traffic your websites already producing.
Being an Affiliate
If you run a small, home-based eBiz, you can join an affiliate program and get paid to share your traffic with another merchant. Youll want to look for sites that tie in with yoursthings your customer base will be interested in. Choose sites whose products are complementary to yours without overlapping.
Before you join any affiliate program, look closely at the merchant youll be promoting. Find out if they have an affiliate earnings historycan they prove their site converts at a specific rate? Do they have an affiliate manager you can talk to about your marketing efforts and any problems you have? Is their program well-established? You want to make sure theyre honest and will pay you for the conversions you bring them.
Your goal is to make customers want to buy their product, and then pass the customers along so the merchant can complete the sale. Dont just paste a link to a merchants webpage and expect it to...