Is Affiliate Marketing For You
by Jeff Grundy on April 27, 2008
in Affiliate Marketing
When you become an affiliate marketer, you are selling someone else’s product and in return you get a portion of the profits. It is a win win situation. For you the product is created and all the marketing materials are created and ready to go. For the owner they do not have to expend any capital or time to market the product.
The amount of the commission (money paid to you) can vary greatly depending on the type of product. A physical product that needs to be shipped may only pay 5%. While a digital product may pay a commission of over 75%. Some products even pay a ongoing monthly commission for as long as the customer keeps buying the product.
Once you join a program, you are given an affiliate ID number. This number is used to take all the potential customers you send to the product owners web site or sales page. This is all done through a tracking link, so you do not have to worry about the tracking. Depending on the quality of the affiliate program, the program may offer you additional tools, such as banners, text links, e-mails and so on.
Although there are many great reasons for a beginner to start with affiliate marketing before they try and create and market their own product, one stands out among them. Creating a product is fairly simple and there are thousands and thousands of them on the internet. The problem is either no on wants them or the owner has no idea how to write good copy to sell them. A good affiliate marketing program has this already done for you.
Finding the porduct to sell can be fun. For a complete beginner and maybe even the advanced Clickbank.com is a great place to start. It is free to get started and fairly simple to use. You can search the marketplace for products to sell. All the products are rated, so you can tell which ones sell the best. And best of all you know you will be paid every two weeks for your commissions earned.
A major obstacle to many beginners, is once they choose a product they think the money will just start flowing in. this is not the case. You must learn to generate traffic (visitors to your website or sales page). This can best be done by investing in a quality affiliate training program.
To find a good program, you need to do a little research. This can be done by starting with a search engine search for affiliate marketing programs. Next get on some internet marketing forums and see what other people are recommending. The warrior forum probably being the best, although their are many. You can get on several of the marketers newsletters and see if you like what they are saying.

