What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing may be the easiest way to make money online.  It is not a “pie in the sky” scheme, it’s a concrete method of making money that has worked successfully for many people starting their own home business, and there are people who have successful home businesses that continue to be affiliate marketers.

Basically, affiliate marketing is where you sign up for a product through an affiliate network and you are given your own code number.  If you decide to promote a digital product, digital products are in the form of an ebook and/or video.  In other words, they can be downloaded on the buyer’s computer on demand.

So, you sign up to promote a digital product, and most good products will give you some form of sales material.  Say they have a sales page and some kind of image or logo.  You can place the logo on your blog.  When someone clicks on that logo or image and buys the product, you get paid.  The commission on an average digital product is in the area of 50% to 75%.  The reason the commissions are so generous is because the seller has no overhead.  There is no printing or shipping involved.  The high commissions are a good reason to start with a digital product, and there are popular digital products that have a high turnover.

It’s really as simple as that if you are promoting a digital product.  Putting the product information on your blog isn’t very time consuming.  The bigger challenge is getting the traffic to your blog so visitors will click through and buy your product.

There are also affiliate programs for physical products.  The commissions in general on physical products are much lower.  The reason they are lower is the product may be a well known brand and the company doesn’t feel compelled to pay big commissions because their products are already in demand, or the processing and shipping charges figure in and the commissions are lower because of these expenses.