Marketing Monday: What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?

If you are new to the world of passive income, and making money online, you may be wondering what affiliate marketing is all about. Affiliate marketing is a great way to get started making money online, and a very easy one at that as all you need is a simple blog or website.

To put it simply, affiliate marketing is promoting and selling someone else’s products or services. You don’t need to provide any products, they already exist. Neither is there a need to provide any service to the end customer, as it is provided by someone else. Your business is to advertise and sell these products or services on behalf of the other business.

With affiliate marketing, there are two main groups to chose from. These are Pay Per Click and Pay Per Performance.

Pay Per Click:

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a great tool for beginners. With this method, usually the affiliate puts a banner or text ad on their site, and also possibly on other sites such as directories or using Google Adwords (make sure these methods are allowed by your merchant), linking the click-through to the merchants website. When someone clicks through on this link, the affiliate is paid a small commission.  While the amount can vary, it is usually a small amount.

Pay Per Performance:

Pay Per Perfomance (PPP)  in contrast is often used by affiliates with more experience, or perhaps a larger database or newsletter list. In this method, the affiliate is only paid a commission once a certain action is performed by the end customer, following a link with the affiliate’s ID. This could include making a purchase, signing up to a website, or filling in a form for more information. While the affiliate only gets paid if the actino is taken, the revenue is usually much higher than PPC affiliate marketing.

Whichever you decide to try (or perhaps a combination of both) be careful to keep the links and banners relevant to your audience and do not spam. A large part of your success at affiliate marketing comes from your audience being able to trust what you recommend.