Affiliate Marketing The Basics Explained For You
A lot of people are currently making money from affiliate marketing and we are not just talking pocket money here, what I am referring to is employment leaving level income or exceeding income. So it is of no wonder why you are considering this avenue and are hence reading this article, however there are many pitfalls about and you should have concerns and this article will give you some information on the background of affiliate marketing and how you can adopt the money making potential of it.
The origin of affiliate marketing, it may surprise you to learn that affiliate marketing has been about for a very very long time, however it was just not known by this name, companies would effectively sell other companies related to their industry leads or customers for a certain price or if those customers purchased something, the referring company would receive a commission. These days, affiliate marketing is big business and you will find most medium level companies in the US up to high level companies will offer some sort of affiliate arrangement if it is in their business strategy, markets like the UK are also catching up fast.
Affiliate marketing currently is very technical however at the same time, simple enough for anyone to comprehend. Lets take Amazon for example, they have an affiliate programme and in the simplest forms, you just need to direct a potential customer to a special website link Amazon gives you and if the customer clicks on your link and then buys something from Amazon, you will get a commission for referring them. However as mentioned at the top end of the business, affiliate marketing can actually be quite complicated, and you can alter technical code behind the scenes and adapt various ‘link’ forms etc.
Now you know what affiliate marketing is, you now need to consider what method you will use to drive customers to the merchant of your choice. For example do you wish to maintain a website and to attract visitors and then refer these visitors to a merchant such as Amazon? Or do you simply wish to try email marketing and attain email addresses and send out emails with your links in them? Websites do tend to have higher conversion rates and are definitely a better starting point for someone looking to get into the area of affiliate marketing.
One of the biggest choices you can make is what market you wish to target and anything specific in that market. For instance you could target the fitness industry and fat burners, however note that anything popular mainstream will be insanely competitive for you to compete in. There is no harm if you are starting in your affiliate marketing venture to go for less popular phrases because what you have to realise, is that even if the phrases/markets you are going after are a lot less popular mainstream then other popular markets, you have to remember that there are billions of internet surfers out there and billions of potential customers, so even if you target the area of snorkelling and some specialised equipment, there will be potential customers searching for this term on the web and willing to spend money.
I hope this article has helped and good luck in your ventures.
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