Affiliate Marketing Programs

The basic idea behind an affiliate marketing program is that you promote someone else's product, link to their site using special HTML code, and get a commission for each sale made by a visitor you refer. One of the oldest affiliate marketing programs on the Web is Amazon.com's Associate Program, which typically pays you 5-10% of each sale you send to their site.

Affiliate marketing really started picking up around 1999. It has since become one of the major ways to promote products over the Internet. Almost every large Website now runs some sort of affiliate marketing program as part of their promotional strategy. I have run several affiliate marketing sites myself and can tell you for a fact that when done correctly, marketing other people's products through affiliate programs can make you a lot of money.

PROS: The popularity of affiliate programs has made it possible to promote products in virtually any area of interest you have. Serious affiliate marketers, often called "Super Affiliates" make the bulk of the money, often bringing in $100,000 or more per year.

CONS: There is a lot of competition in this field. I've heard that 90% of all affiliates make little or no sales. Only a small percentage of affiliates make serious money. To become successful with affiliate programs, you typically need a diverse set of skills that include web development skills, writing ability, and marketing knowledge sufficient to drive serious traffic to your site.

At it's core, the recipe for success with affiliate marketing programs involves two key things: 1) getting traffic to your site, and 2) getting potential buyers to click on links to your affiliates. While the idea is simple, to actually do affiliate marketing profitably, you will need to do a lot of market research before even getting started. Nevertheless, I believe affiliate marketing programs are probably the most sensible ways to get started with your own online business. You don't have to have your own product in order to start, and if you do it well, the income potential is very high.

If you are interested in becoming an affiliate marketer, I highly recommend the following resources:

• Super Affiliate Handbook - This is a downloadable ebook written by Rosalind Gardner, who has made over $430,000 a year promoting affiliate programs. The overall strategies in this book are very sound. There is a full review of this porduct on this site. Read the review.
  
  
• Google Cash - Another downloadable ebook. This one contains an ingenious way to promote affiliate programs without owning your own Website. Read the review.