The Basics Of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is basically an agreement between a business or company (website) and one or more affiliates (you), when visitors arrive at the website by your efforts and sign-up or buy you earn comission.

Many different markets use affiliate marketing therefore you can pretty much sell anything you like, from paintings and sculptures to cars and holidays. How and why? well affiliate marketing is a very effective sales technique, so nearly everybody uses it.

There are three revenue models you can find in affiliate marketing, Pay Per Click, Pay Per Lead and Pay Per Sale.

• Pay Per Click: you earn money when somebody clicks on a banner or button advert. Like advertising networks for example.
• Pay Per Lead: you earn money when somebody signs up, subscribes or fills out a form. For example, they just type in their email address to subscribe to a website and the website pays you for their subscription.
• Pay Per Sale: you earn a commission when somebody buys something, a product or service.  For example, you promote a laptop and when somebody buys it you earn a percentage.

How to earn money with affiliate marketing

First you need to join an affiliate program or affiliate network, then after you choose what you want to promote you copy the html code and paste it into a html widget. A widget is basically a banner where you place html code which later turns into an image with text containing a link.

When your article, blog or website is published the widget is clickable and visible (containing your affiliate ID, so the affiliate program or network knows to pay you). When people click on it they're taken to the webpage where the product or service is.

One of the main aspects of affiliate marketing is traffic, you need to promote your affiliate links as much as posible if you're going to make any money. The higher amount of visitors the higher the chances of earning.

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