The process where anyone like you and I can generate a nice income by building his website and marketing others product at the same time is called affiliate marketing. The affiliates are paid commission on the basis of the amount of traffic they can generate and the sales that go through it.
The merchant and the affiliates are aware of the benefits that they can obtain through this partnership model. Thus affiliate marketing has become an easy way for affiliates to get easy profits by promoting the affiliate programs, with or without websites.
The popularity of the affiliate marketing has changed people’s outlook on it and it has become a main source of profits and revenue.
There are many different forms of affiliate marketing and they are used according to the affiliate’s need and the product we wants to market. Here are a number of tools used in affiliate marketing but the basic ones fall under two main category:
Pay Per Click
This is the fastest and easiest way for affiliates to start earning money as the affiliate only needs to make a website and start with the product that suits him best. In this method of marketing the merchant pays the affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site. That is simply when a visitor simply clicks through the web site regardless of the fact that he/she doesn’t purchase anything from the site. The typical fees of this Pay per click method are very small but it sure is the easiest way of earning money working from home.
Pay Per Performance
In this method the affiliate is paid by the merchant only whenever the affiliate’s referrals translate into action. That is really when the affiliate actually buys something from the merchant’s site or when the visitor becomes a lead. This means a lot of saving for the merchant.
These tools are no more than just the ways in which an affiliate could help the merchant get the desired sales from his own online store. There are advantages for both the seller and the affiliate in this way. The affiliate acts more like a contracted marketing agent which would only be paid a commission only when he either makes a sale or draws the attention of a potential customer to see through the merchant’s website.
Advantages of hiring affiliates to market your products
For the merchant there are numerous benefits of outsourcing this task to several affiliates on the internet. This could be understood better through the analogy of Adam Smith again.
The merchant wishes to sell his products to those who are interested and generate more sales and hence more revenues. In this process the addition of an affiliate makes the task even easier as there are no costs involved until and unless the merchant himself benefits from it.
The merchant can gain recognition as the affiliates try their best to get maximum sales and visitors for him.
This technique would even be better than advertising with Google’s Adsense or other websites that also follow the CPC (Cost per Click) payment method but, in affiliate marketing the affiliates would do more advertising by hook or by crook to get their website visited and hence your products seen.
The number of links pointing towards your site are seen as backlinks and the traffic on your website also reduces your need to get professional SEO done.
