Affiliate Marketing Series Part One

Critiqued by Cowboytf | February 11, 2008 .

After a long weekend with guests, it’s time to pull the roller shades down and get back to blogging!

A very common question that I receive almost on a daily basis, is “What is affiliate marketing?”. I figure the best way for me to explain this, especially to the newbies, is by writing a series that explains what it is and how to use it. Let’s get started!

**WHAT IS AFFILIATE MARKETING?

Affiliate marketing is where you refer visitors from your website to a merchant’s website. A merchant is any individual or company that sells products or services online. These companies pay their affiliates to promote their products and services online.

**HOW DOES IT WORK?

When a visitor comes to your website and clicks on one of your merchant’s links, a tracking cookie is set on the visitor’s computer. A cookie is nothing more than a small text file that is placed on a user’s computer when they visit a website. This cookie tells a merchant that a visitor was referred by your website. When that visitor makes a purchase, or completes some other action on a merchant’s website, the merchant gives you a commission.

HOW DO I EARN MONEY AS AN AFFILIATE?

There are 4 ways an affiliate earns money.

PPC(Pay-Per-Click)–The visitor clicks on the affiliate link to visit the merchants site.
PPS(Pay-Per-Sale)–The visitor clicks on the affiliate link and makes a purchase from the merchant.
PPL(Pay-Per-Lead)–The visitor clicks on the affiliate link and completes a lead form.
PPA(Pay-Per-Action)–The visitor clicks on the affiliate link and downloads, installs, or uses a product or service in some way.

The most common way is Pay Per Sale.

Example: While browsing around for a new laptop, I found that dell had the best all around package. They offered me everything I wanted, including an antivirus program and a 4 year warranty.

I have 2 affiliate links in this paragraph. One to D-ell and one for A-ntivirus. If a visitor clicks on the D link and decides to purchase a brand new laptop, I get a percentage of that sale for referring the customer to that particular merchant.

Commission rates vary depending on the merchant. Some pay very well and some pay lousy, so it’s up to you to decide which merchants you choose to deal with.

Sounds easy but it’s not. Affiliate marketing can be quite difficult if you don’t know what you are doing. In the next series, I’ll discuss the remaining ways to get paid. For now, I’ll let you digest the basics and subscribe to my feed so you don’t miss out on any of the future affiliate series.

Next in series

Table of contents for Affiliate Marketing Series

Affiliate Marketing Series Part One
Affiliate Marketing Series Part Two

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5 Comments so far

Leigh February 11, 2008 1:19 pm

Great explaination! I love this blog!

Leigh’s last blog post..Ah! Key West!
Affiliate Marketing » Blog Archive » Affiliate Marketing Series Part One February 11, 2008 3:01 pm

[...] Original post by Cowboytf [...]
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