Perhaps the simplest way to explain Affiliate Marketing is that it is a way of making money online by refer people to products, services, or information they want through your Web site or Blog. This is very different than many other home based business opportunties you may be thinking of.

We all know a family member or friend that tried to peddle some nonsense or get you to join some matrix they were part of. This isn’t what affiliate marketing is about! When done correctly, you’re just getting paid to providing people with solutions to problems they need help with and have asked for. Not all affiliate plans work in the same way or pay the same rates. Some enable you to place text or image hyperlinks to products or a Web site, others allow you to set up a shopping or store page that offers products related to the content of your Web site, and others require you to simply place general advertising banners or buttons. There are many different type of forms for pro motioning, but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your web site, or blog to another site where they then buy something.

For instance many of you may read or seen some information online that you like. Then later you emailed that information to some of your family and friends that might be interested in the same thing. Well that’s sort of like doing affiliate marketing. Other variations on this are where you earn an amount for referring a visitor who takes some kind of action.

Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount per conversion.

Are There Different Types of Affiliate Programs

Yes ! Different advertisers offer different types of affiliate programs such as Pay Per Sale, Pay Per Lead, Pay Per Click, and Text Links or Banners. Being an affiliate of any merchant usually means you are paid a commission per sale on the advertiser’s web site. Depending on the advertiser offer you may not be paid unless the user subscribes and pays for a full service from the advertiser.

How To Join An Affiliate Program?

When choosing to join a Affiliate Program there are a large number of affiliate programs to choose from and many are structured differently. You visit the site of a company you’re interested in promoting or being affiliated with and fill out there form. Don’t worry you don’t have to pay to join a Affiliate Program cause there all free to join.

Before you join a company’s affiliate program you would want to read about their affiliate program to discover how much you’ll get paid, when and how. When you sign up to be an affiliate of the company you’re provided a user name and password to login so you can see your stats, and how much your owed and where to get your marketing material. Once you login you’ll get your free marketing material such as banners, ad copy and a free website with your unique id to use to refer people to their product, service or website.

After you have you login and understand how everything works, you go out and start promoting your website address to people that will be interested in this product, service or website. In this last step is where people have a lot of problems and where training is very important.

Making Money with Affiliate Programs ….

Can you make money doing Affiliate Marketing, why YES. While affiliate marketing can be incredibly lucrative it is important to know that affiliate marketing is not easy money. Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon numerous factors including:

-traffic (high traffic helps a lot)

-finding relevant products

-finding quality products

-building trust with your readers

-you being able to write good sales copy (and more)

There’s also some risk associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of a low quality you can actually burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand. It’s also worth noting that affiliate marketing doesn’t work on all blogs. Some blogs are on topics where it is hard to find products to promote – other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and for other blogs it just doesn’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach.

Is Affiliate Marketing for You …

Affiliate Marketing is for every one out there so you need to take advantage of this as long as you have the drive and motivation. Also most affiliate marketers aren’t usually affected by recessions and lay off too. The other things about being an Affiliate Marketer you have a choice of working it part time or full time it’s all on you, you can even make a career out of it too.

If you want to be a good Affiliate Marketer I suggest some training and joining a website like Wealthy Affiliate University they will teach you what you need to know but they can’t make you successful. That still has to come from you, and you need to keep your head up even if you don’t see a dime or results right away or even after months of work. If you know that this is not you, then you just want to avoid being Affiliate Marketer all together and continue to search for a work at home job.

Cause at the end of the day you have to chose what’s best for you and be honest with yourself, so just don’t let any one play jedi mine trick’s on you. You need to do what’s best for you.