Affiliate Marketing 101

Every year, many people make thousands or even millions of dollars on the
internet through affiliate marketing. So, what is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a very popular and effective way to make money
online. Affiliate marketing works like this: Companies and individuals pay
other people to advertise their programs, products and services on websites,
in ezines, on pay-per-click advertising, in forums, in directories and
anywhere else they can, whether online or offline. In other words, you, the
affiliate marketer, would in a sense be considered a salesperson for a
company or individual offering a product or service. The best thing about
affiliate marketing online is that there is so little overhead. No products
need to be stocked, and no customer service needs to be provided by the
affiliate marketer.

Some of the top money making products and services in affiliate marketing
have to do with affiliate marketing and online money making itself. There
are hundreds of affiliate marketing ebooks, programs and methods, and this
number is increasing daily. Since affiliate marketing methods change fairly
frequently, a new crop of hot-selling products such as ebooks, videos or
audios that teach this very subject rises up every few days. These products
and services are offered in what are called "launches," which also
frequently include "joint ventures." An online joint venture often refers to
one or more people agreeing to represent a new product to their mailing
lists, sending out an email advertisement to the thousands or even millions
of subscribers. In the past couple of years, certain net marketing gurus
have made up to a million dollars or more in their product launches.

Because of the competition, top affiliate marketing gurus like to emphasize
that in order to make any income online, it is wise to specialize, finding a
niche that needs improvement and becoming an expert in it. This sort of
business will require patience and passion, and many people do not know
exactly what they are passionate about and what they will be able to master
in order to make a desirable income. There are always "get-rich-quick"
stories that tempt and tease, such that people feel like they're missing out
on something, but such successes are few and far between. We all hear these
stories, of someone making $10,000 or more a month, after only a few months'
work, but only a small percentage will be able to reproduce this successful
effort. Rather than going for the "quick fix," in most cases it is advisable
to settle in for the long haul, if you are interested in affiliate
marketing. Keep your ear to the ground by joining mailing lists of
well-known net marketing gurus, and keep learning - that's one way to figure
it all out.
But this approach to affiliate marketing can be very time-consuming.

Affiliate marketing is useful not only for the field of affiliate marketing
itself. It doesn't matter what product or service in what field you are
representing; the techniques, methods and procedures will be the same, as
marketing is marketing. If, for example, you have a website on dog breeding,
you can become an affiliate of a variety of companies and programs, to add
their products to your site. Then, your main problem will be traffic
generation. And how to generate traffic is the subject of a whole different
article.

About The Author: Jamie Clarkson has been online since 1995.
For more information on http://supermarketingaffiliates.com,
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