This is a very basic overview of how affilitate marketing works. by no means is this complete as this is such a vast fields but it is a better introduction than i ever received. Affiliate Marketing is the process where you (The Affiliate) bring two parties together; the Consumer and the Merchant. In theory it is quite simple but in practice it requires quite a bit of work, but once you start sending traffic (The Consumer) to the merchant and they in turn purchase the intended product that the merchant has to offer, is when you start generating an income mainly on a commission basis. Starting out, there are steps and they are as follow.

Step 1 - Choosing a Niche

A Niche is the intended product that you wish the customer to purchase. There are affiliate programs by the tens of thousands on most products out there. It is highly recommended that you find something you are passionate about or something that interests you as you will be spending a lit of time promoting this product.

Step 2 - Your Website

This is your own little piece of online real estate from where you will be promoting your intended product. To create a website you have to create a relevant domain name. This is quite simple and costs as little as £6.00 your first year round, give or take. Once you have a domain, you will need someone to host your site for you (Web Hosting). This is slightily more expensive. Can be as little as £2.99 a month depending on what hosting company you decide to go with. This is still the easy part. Through your own website you will be able to link you niche that you chose and whenever a consumer clicks on one of the links leading to your chosen niche and in turn buys the intended product, it is then tracked through your site and you earn commission off this product.

Step 3 - Generating Traffic

Traffic is generated through a number of ways. The first 3 techniques only require your time and effort and they are; Affiliate Article Marketing (Writing about your intended product and attaching a link to your site) It's not as hard as it seems. The second is social networking through social mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the list goes on. Third is email marketing. Here you build a subscribers list by offering potential customers something in return for their email address and this allows you to send them promotional offers. Now to paid advertisement. PayPerClick. Everytime someone clicks on your link, you pay for it. (Even if you don't make a sale) There are other ways to generate traffic but these are by far the most popular. I however would recommend sticking to the first three when starting out as it only costs you time and effort.

Step 4 - Keep on Improving

In a perfect world we would be able to just sit back and watch the money roll in but it's never that simple. There are always ways to improve your webiste, find better products, write better articles, expand your social groups and not to mention to improve your knowledge.