“Affiliate Marketing” is the term used to cover a wide range of online income techniques that can earn you commission money by promoting products or merchant web sites that sell their products. You have heard of “Other People’s Money” (OPM), well think of Affiliate Marketing as “Other People’s Products” (OPP). A merchant could have the greatest product in the world but to let the world know about it they must have a marketing plan to advertise it. Marketing and advertising budgets are a significant part of the “cost of doing business” and merchants are always looking for the most cost efficient method to sell their product.
This is good News for you!
Not so very long ago, the only way a merchant could advertise their product was to place ads in the newspaper, magazine, TV/Cable, radio, billboards and local mail flyers. Today merchants reach a much larger group of potential customers online with their own website. When a merchant sets up an Affiliate Marketing network they exponentially increase their sales exposure at a cost effective commission per sale. By having affiliates placing advertising on websites all over the Internet, the merchant can attract customers and doesn’t have to pay unless or until it gets results. The more websites with which a merchant is affiliated, the more exposure their products or services will get.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
The Affiliate Marketing partner, (you), can use three popular methods to earn a share of the sale profits: pay per lead, pay per click, and pay per sale.
PPL
Pay per lead advertising is where you might place a merchant’s product or website link in an e-mail, a forum or on your own website. Every time a potential client registers at the merchant’s website as a result of your effort, a cookie (your affiliate tracking ID), is logged and you will earn a previously determined amount of money. Click on the following Pay per lead example: Wealthy Affiliate Free Affiliate Training
PPC
Pay per click marketing is where a potential customer leaves the affiliate website by clicking on the link leading to the merchant’s website; a certain amount of money is earned by the affiliate via your affiliate tracking ID. This amount can also vary depending on the product or service that is advertised and the agreed-upon commission. Click on the following Pay per click example: Emergency-Preparedness
PPS
Pay per sale advertising allows the affiliate to earn money every time a sale is made as a result of advertising on the affiliate’s website. The affiliate might earn a percentage, or commission, based on the amount of the sale or might earn a flat rate, depending on the agreement. Click on the flowing Pay per sale examples: My Amazon A-store or Deals Extreme
How Do I Get Paid?
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There are a variety of methods used by these Affiliate programs to pay you: The money might be electronically transferred immediately to the affiliate; the money might be transferred at regularly scheduled times of the day, week or month; or a check might be mailed to the affiliate at regular intervals.
Remember that you are investing your time and effort to make money, so you need to be careful. 
It is in your best interest to thoroughly research the merchant before agreeing to be their affiliation. Not doing so can result in providing advertising for a merchant that refuses to pay commission fees, relocates or changes businesses without informing the affiliate. However this is rare and most merchant Affiliate programs have a pleasant and profitable business arrangement, but one must do some research on each merchant thoroughly before starting a deal with him.
The benefits of Affiliate Marketing are that you don’t need to create a product, you don’t need any store and you don’t need to ship. All you have to do is to promote and sell a product. But you will need a web site!
To “Learn How to make Affiliate money online for free” and get two free hosted websites as I did, check out my other Articles here.
Tell me if this Article, “What is Affiliate Marketing“, was of any help to you and what do you think about Affiliate Marketing now? (Use the Comment area below to share your thoughts with us.)
Thanks for taking the time to stop by.
I decided to follow the successful people in the “Work from Home” business and “went back to school” to copy their success and make money at the same time! Wealthy Affiliate was my choice. It’s the only program I recommend. My Dream is now a Money Making Machine. Click Here to Take the Test Drive now for free!
Hi William, I really enjoyed Learning from your post and the way you keep it information and yet simple enough for anyone to understand what is pay per lead advertising, pay per sale advertising and pay per click marketing terms used commonly in the internet marketing world.
I think my most important question when I first started out was how would I get paid. And again you nail it with your simplicity.
Thank you for your kind comment. Of course, the only reason I work from home is to make money and after the training at Wealthy Affiliate I was finally able to do that. Now I am so very happy to share that gold mine with others. William 🙂
Hello William Firstly I loved the explanation of Affiliate Marketing as “Other People’s Products†(OPP) ha ha I thought that was a great analogy.
As is your summary of what Affiliate Marketing involves and to quote you …”you don’t need to create a product, you don’t need any store and you don’t need to ship.” ..Which of course mean you only have to promote and sell the product.
I am pleased to see you are promoting Wealthy Affiliates as I agree with you this is an awesome place to point your readers to, as it is an excellent place to get an online education and create a successful online business. 🙂
Thank you Peter for your kind words.
My journey into the Affiliate marketing and online world was very difficult before I found the key to understanding. That was an education by and with people who have made this journey at Wealthy Affiliate.
I can’t say enough about the importance of learning from those who have succeed in this field. The “pay it forward” and “share the knowledge” attitude by the WA community coupled with The WA classes have been what I’ve been looking for.
William 🙂
Great review of what Affiliate Marketing is all about William. I’m sure your visitors will gain greatly from your insight. Well done my friend!
Thank you Peter, it’s good to hear from you again. William 🙂
This was a good read. As a fellow Affiliate Marketer it was easy for me to relate to what you have written. On that note I am sure that newer people looking for answers will find a lot of value in what you have shared.
Thanks!
Thanks Beau, When I thought about someone wanting to work from home, it struck me that they might not understand some of the basics of Affiliate Marketing. I hope it is of some help to them. William 🙂
I have actually set up my own site using these techniques. I am still relatively new to the whole affiliate marketing world and it seems to be the right move for me at this time. It is still an incredible amount of work, not unlike having a brick and mortar store, you just have the benefit of lower startup costs (which is why I went this route). The question I have here is this…for pay per click, does the person clicking the link have to buy from the linked site or do you simply get a small amount based on the initial click and link? Thanks, Shawn
Thanks for the comment Shawn and confirmed that this is hard work but with great rewards if you stay the course. As to your question on PPC (pay per Click); there are two type of PPC one is where you bid on keywords and pay for the traffic driven to your site by the click as with Google Adwords and the other is when you are paid by the click when you drive traffic to someone else’s site like http://Adf.ly William 🙂
Wow I’m happy I found your website. This is really helpful information. Affiliate marketing seems like an easy and fun way to make some extra money or even a full time job. I like the idea go having a virtual store. It’s better than having a real store because there’s no costs of rent or anything like that. It seems all you have to do is pay for the domain and attract visitors.
Have you had a lot of success with this?
Thanks a lot for reading
Thank you Dylan for your kind remarks. Affiliate Marketing is a great work from home idea and the virtual store that can be set up on your own web site with the tools provided by Wealthy Affiliate and Amazon almost grantee your success if you take the time to learn how.
Yes I have succeeded with my on line store thanks to the training provided for free at Wealthy Affiliate. It took some time but it was well worth it.
William:)