Monday, June 28, 2010

What is Affliliate Marketing?

I am exploring affiliate marketing. I always knew I would use affiliate programs as part of my plan for making money from home but as many of you know, I spend most of my time writing articles for clients' websites. I need my freelance writing income, but I also need to supplement it with my own projects.

For those who are not familiar with affiliate marketing, I'll give a brief explanation. When you become an affiliate, you are paid a commission for selling something. Huge affiliate programs give affiliates numerous items to sell. This means that you can pick a product that you feel strongly about and write blog posts or articles about the subject. Then, include an ad or a link for the product you are trying to sell.

For example, I have a website about setting goals called GoalPlan.org. Here is a post for that website in which I included a link to a product for which I am an affiliate: Online Goal Setting Software

You see if you click the link in my article, it takes you to the sales page for the product that I am selling. For each sale, I get a commission. You can take a look and see what I am talking about. I may change some of the wording on the article, but it will give you an idea of how to sell products with blogs.

There's one very important thing I need to mention. You should NEVER pay to be an affiliate. You should not be required to purchase anything. The affiliate program that I joined is one that is reputable- ClickBank.com
They are free to join of course, so feel free to sign up and explore the program.

If you already have a blog or website, you may want to check out ClickBank's programs to see if there are some products you could be marketing to increase your income from the website. Just make sure that affiliate links do not violate the terms of service for the host of your blog or website first.

Another thing that I fully intend to do is participate on ClickBank as a vendor. That means that I create a product like an ebook and sell it through my website and ClickBank affiliates. Being a ClickBank vendor would give my ebook more exposure. Someone might think that paying affiliates commission is not appealing, but if you think about it, I would be saving lots of money. How? Because instead of paying advertising on the Internet that may or may not give me a sale, I am paying affiliates only for sales. Therefore, all the money spent on commission is because there were sales- not because I am trying to get sales.

So Clickbank is a win-win situation for people who want to make money promoting products and people who want to make a quality product and sell it. I suggest you think about using both sides of the ClickBank affiliate program- as an affiliate and as a vendor. I'm sure if you are reading this, you have insight or experience that could make a great ebook. Now, you just have to sit down and do it! Turn your dreams into success by taking action on your goals.

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