Affiliate Marketing?

To learn how to make money with affiliate marketing online, in retirement or any other time,  you first need to understand just what “affiliate marketing is”.

Wikipedia defines affiliate marketing this way:

“Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network (that contains offers for the affiliate to choose from and also takes care of the payments), the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third-party vendors.”

I Am A Publisher who Creates a Website

Basically, as a blogger, I am a publisher (affiliate) when I create my websites.  I place affiliate links to products offered by a merchant on my websites, along with a review or blog post about that product or my experience in using that product.  Then a visitor to my site will hopefully read my blog post, see the link to the product, decide he/she would like to purchase the product and click on my link to go the merchants’ website and make a purchase.  The merchant will pay me a commission for helping them make that sale.

If my write-up or post is interesting enough to create a desire for my site visitors to click on my affiliate link and purchase a product, then I’ll make money using these affiliate links.  My review or post should be fair and honest, stating both the good and anything negative I found in the product.  The more honest my words are about the product, the more “trust” my site visitors will have in me.  As I continue to research and create good “content for my blog site, I will be turning myself into an “authority” in the subject or niche I am writing about.

I try to write with sincerity, so as not to try and “fool” my website visitors into buying something that will not work for them.  That would be an affiliate marketing scam.   Everyone hates a “scammer” and I certainly do not want to get the reputation of dishonesty or scamming my site visitors.   If I did that, I’m sure it would come back to haunt me through comments on the web – and my own conscience would not let me do that.

An Affiliate Website Allows You to promote the products of various companies for a commission

So basically an affiliate website allows you to help a merchant sell their products through clicking on links in your website, drawn to your page by your content (writing of your blog post, review of a product, etc.).  In return, when a sale is made from someone clicking through a link on your site, the merchant will reward you with a commission for that sale.  That’s why it is important to pick a niche or topic of interest that you are extremely interested or passionate about for you to make your website fort, so you can have lots to say about the topic and any products you review or recommend.

Why Wait to Start Making Money, Start Your Free Trial Now!

The training provided by the Wealthy Affiliate Program will help you select a good niche or topic for your affiliate website and train you in everything you need to know about affiliate marketing and using the provided tools so you can make money from that website.  Just read my detailed review of Wealthy Affiliate to learn how to sign up.

Comments

Thanks for looking at my site and coming to this page.  I would love for you to leave any questions or comments below.

– Shirley