The Savvy Entrepreneur

Are you part of the Amazon Associates program (this is NOT an affiliate link) — that is, do you link to Amazon products on your site, blog or anywhere else in hopes of receiving referral fees (earning commissions)? If so, you are engaging in one of the first online affiliate marketing programs.

Affiliate marketing is a way for online merchants or advertisers (anyone who sells anything on the internet) to share their revenue with people who want to promote their wares.

In order for this to happen:

1. The advertiser must invest in and set up an affiliate program.
2. The advertiser invites people (mailing list, joint venture partners, satisfied clients, anyone looking to make extra money on the internet) to join his affiliate program.

If you accept his invitation:

1. You must register (open an account) as an affiliate (make sure you understand the T’s & C’s before signing up).
2. Once your registration is confirmed, you will be assigned a special URL (an affiliate link) identifying you as the referral source.

Now, you’re ready to go out and promote the advertiser’s products and earn a little money in the process.

How you are permitted to use your affiliate link differs from merchant to merchant and depends on the affiliate program used by the advertiser. The most common ways to display your affiliate link are through :

• text
• images
• banners
• buttons
• store/shopping pages
• etc.

Commissions vary from merchant to merchant and from product to product and so do the payout methods. Again, be sure you understand your affiliate agreement, especially the clauses pertaining to payouts, before you start advertising someone else’s products.

Here are 3 main ways to earn money as an affiliate:

• Pay-per-click (PPC): You get paid each time someone clicks your ad. No purchase is necessary.
• Pay-per-sale (PPS): You get paid each time someone buys something after clicking your ad.
• Pay-per-lead (PPL): You get paid each time someone follows (clicks) your ad to the advertiser’s site and completes a required action (downloads a file or software, completes newsletter or trial offer sign-up form, etc).

As with all aspects of Internet Marketing, there is so much more to than what I’ve explained here. I’ve just given you enough information to start thinking of how (and if) you’d like to implement this type of marketing strategy in your own business — either:

• as an affiliate (making money promoting someone else’s products)
• though an affiliate program (paying others to promote your products)
• do both

Doing a search on “affiliate marketing” or “internet marketing” will produce more information than you could ever read in a lifetime.

The only way I use affiliate marketing is by recommending businesses I have personally used, know and trust, and who just happen to have an affiliate program (I would recommend them even if they didn’t). Honestly, I don’t think I’ve even brought in $200 through my affiliate links. I don’t rely on affiliate marketing to generate income, so I don’t “push” them actively.

How do you use affiliate marketing in your business?