Selling Other People's Stuff - The Basics of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is simply selling other people's stuff online for a commission.  The "stuff" could be digital such as an e-book or a training course or it could be physical products like lawn mowers and televisions. 

Becoming an affiliate marketer is often a great way to earn a little (or a lot) of money.  You can sprinkle it in to what you are already doing online or if you aren't doing something online already,  it is a simple way to get started.  If you are currently selling products or services online, you will want to consider adding your own affiliate program as a form marketing.  

Your tasks as an affiliate marketer will be to drum up traffic to your affiliate links.  When your specially coded affiliate link is clicked and in turn a customer buys--you get a commission.  It is that simple.

There are many things you can promote as an affiliate. On Amazon.com or ShareASale.com, for instance, you can promote anything tangible (and a few digital download to boot).  If you want to be in the paintball niche, you can sell specific paintball guns, paintballs, and clothing.

You can go to sites like e-junkie.com or ClickBank.com and get a unique affiliate ID to promote an endless supply of information products (digital download). They house everything from scrapbooking to lifting weights.

You can even become an affiliate promoting actions.  There are many Internet marketers who focus their business on getting a steady stream of traffic to take an action, such as filling out a survey online.

Another form of action affiliate marketing is getting paid per click for someone to click a banner advertisement on the site.  The commissions are lower but you get paid for them clicking for more information rather than having to close a sale.  Popular pay per click providers are Google Adsense and Chitka.

            How much can an affiliate marketer earn? There are no limits.

You can market multiple niches and work as much or as little as you want to generate targeted traffic through your links.  Super affiliates earn six figures or more, but even a beginner affiliate can earn enough to pay the bills each month – with some change to spare!  Not bad for just sharing special links to other people's stuff or allowing others to sell your stuff for a commission.

Oh....and yes!   The links in this blog post are affiliate links!

Adam Siler

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