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The purpose of this article is to introducte you to the affiliate world. You will soon know what an affiliate is, and quickly you'll be understanding the affiliate industry, and exactly how YOU can make money on the internet.
If you already know what an affiliate is, and are already promoting a program or two, but you just haven't seen the results you want, then you will be happy to learn what the affiliate industry is "really" about, and how you can use this knowledge to your advantage. After all, knowledge is power.
Never think you know everything, always stay open to learning. Especially in internet business, things change very fast and as soon as you get comfortable, it's time to learn something new. Stay abreast of what's going on around you and you will succeed.
How Affiliate Marketing Began
The concept of affiliate marketing began centuries ago when merchants and business owners discovered that "word of mouth" was the most cost effective form of advertising. When folks see or use something they like, they are quick to tell others about it. The concept is extremely powerful.
Using this knowledge, the idea of offering incentives for these everyday folks to spread the word about products or services was invented. These incentives developed into opportunities. You could not only earn commissions from direct sales, but in some cases could also earn residual income from recruiting others. Examples of these forms of opportunities are Amway, Mary Kay, Home Interior, and thousands of others.
Some are considered direct sales with straight commissions, others have become known as multilevel marketing opportunities, or MLM. In essence, each individual representative of these companies or merchants, is an affiliate of the company they represent. Thus the relationship between the affiliate and the merchant began.
As the internet came into being, the affiliate/merchant relationship began to evolve. In 1996 Amazon established themselves as one of the first to begin an affiliate program in the online world. Though they technically weren't the first to come up with the idea online, they were best known for establishing a tracking system, and a means for people to earn extra income from their existing websites. It was a win-win situation.
Amazon simply offered to pay a percentage of the sales that any affiliate brought them. Since Amazon is a large retailer, many existing sites who already had traffic, were able to quickly increase their income by simply "plugging" the Amazon link onto their website. Another big plus of this idea, is that Amazon also made it easy to link to certain types of books that relate to the topic of the website, thus automatically increasing booksales from existing visitors.
As you see, Amazon offered a different affiliate model from the known opportunities offline. This immediately introduced new "blood" into the affiliate world, and suddenly things started moving and shaking. New ideas were developed and more hybrids of the original relationship began to form. The incredible thing doing business on the internet, is that everyone is on a level playing field. Large fortune 500 companies have the same platform as a basement start up business.
No longer do you need the capital required to open a McDonald's restaurant (for example) in order to earn big money. You can now open an online business on a shoe string budget, and literally earn thousands upon thousands of dollars if you stick with it and learn. This makes it super easy and affordable for smaller businesses to come to the net and obtain global exposure. And these smaller businesses can now even afford to offer their own affiliate programs.
As these new programs were being groomed to fit the business models, it became necessary to begin to create new forms of affiliate programs. Such as pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, 2-tier, co-registration etc. All of these programs can be summed up under the name "affiliate program".
With the idea of a website and affiliate programs blossoming all over the web, affiliates have started taking the "affiliate opportunity" into their own hands. Now, instead of promoting only one affiliateprogram, often affiliates promote many. In some affiliate models this works great, in others it's discouraged. Regardless, with the internet affiliate programs have opened doors wide for people to change their lives.
Who is an Affiliate?
An affiliate can be ANYONE. It can be a person who wishes to make money through affiliateprograms, it can be product owners, site owners, large businesses, offline businesses, or anyone else that can think of a way to integrate an idea into their business.
Affiliate programs can be implemented in thousands of ways! Often competitors will cross promote their products or services to each other, and use the affiliateprogram to track results. Other models use pay-per-click, which is especially profitable for high-traffic websites.
For the person at home, who doesn't own a business, but wants to work from home and be independently successful, they can pick topics that suit their interests and start promoting programs that relate to it.
Who is a Merchant?
The merchant can be ANYONE. In most cases, the merchant is the product or service owner that is paying the commissions to the affiliates. However, some affiliates know the value of their visitors so specifically, that they offer their own pay-per-click affiliate program. So now the affiliate is the merchant. This scenario may not be for you, but it just shows how some people develop their business.
Merchants begin an affiliate programs to make money. However, as affiliates are getting smarter, it has now become necessary for the merchants to not only offer the opportunity of income to the affiliates, but to also offer quality and effective sale processes. In essence, without an effective sales process, why would an affiliate want to waste their time? Therefore, the merchant can no longer "use" the affiliate, but now also has to "support" them.
Another way that a merchant can also be an affiliate, is by offering backend products to their current customers. If you own a car website that sells a report on how to beat the dealer price, you could also offer other relating products to your customers and earn a commission from it. In this scenario you are not only a merchant but also an affiliate.
Your Responsibility As An Affiliate
As an affiliate, regardless if you've ever personally talked to or met the owner of the program you promote, it is your responsibility to follow their policy. To promote them ethically and honestly. This business isn't just about you. It's about a partnership. Whether it "feels" like it or not, becoming an affiliate is the same thing as joint venturing with a business partner. Good business practice is strongly recommended and over time, you'll build a reputation that can not be measured.
There are affiliates that have taken a leadership role and have become super affiliates. And merchants WANT those super affiliates. These super affiliates are well-known and can get special compensation from merchants. Wouldn't it be nice to contact a merchant to work out special commissions for promoting them? It pays to treat your merchant right, and be professional. Keep this in mind always.
At the same time, the merchant's responsibility is to pay you on time and to treat you with respect and dignity. To notify you when policies are changed or when promotions change. This allows you to update your site and promotions in a timely manner to ensure you aren't advertising something that's no longer in effect. The street goes both ways in the merchant/affiliate relationship.
Though you may not know all of the details of the affiliate industry, you now know that it's much more than just promoting a program and receiving paychecks. There is a "big picture" to this whole game, and once you figure that out, you are FAR ahead of other affiliates just entering the affiliate world. Which is exactly where you want to be.
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