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Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing from Your Own Website

Affiliate marketing is selling other companies’ goods through your own, content filled website. The idea is to create a website

with a central theme that is in high demand.

All the articles would be related to that theme and would weave in recommendations or reviews of the products you're trying to sell.

Amazon.com was one of the first companies to have an affiliate program. An affiliate pre-sells the books or other goods Amazon offers on his website and if a visitors buys the product through the website, the affiliate gets a commission.

There are literally thousands of companies that have affiliate marketing programs. The commission rates run from 2% up to 50% (mostly for electronically delivered goods). For hard goods the average is about 10%.

Most of the larger companies, such as American Express, Walmart or Sharper Image use agents such as Commission Junction or Linkshare to handle the transactions and paperwork for them, while others, such as Amazon run their own affiliate programs.

Contextual Advertising

Affiliates can supplement their income by joining contextual advertising programs, such as the one run by Google. You would add special code to your website pages that would display carries served that are relevant to the content of your site.

You then share in the ad revenue. While Google is the major player right now, Yahoo has started its own plan and MSN supposedly has something similar in the works.

These advertising programs allow the website to produce income even if the visitor is not interested in the specific product or service being offered on the website.

For those interested in learning more about contextual advertising and mastering ways of maximizing your income, Michael Cheney has created a series of downloadable videos called, sensibly enough, Adsense Videos.

There are many people who claim to be experts that advertise on the net. Mr. Cheney will produce proof that he makes almost $19,000 a month from Adsense alone.

Affiliate Marketing Resources

For an excellent overview of affiliate marketing, visit Sitesell Affiliate Marketing. You will find a clear explanation of the pros and cons of affiliate marketing, along with good reasons why Site Build It is the program to use as the foundation of a successful affiliate marketing site.

Also visit The Affiliate Masters page and download your free copy of the Affiliate Masters Course. This book contains more information about affiliate selling than you will find in other e-books selling online for $60 or more.

You will learn about writing compelling content to drive pre-sold customers to your merchants' sites. If you want to create a valuable and profitable home business, the insights in this course are truly priceless.

Another source I can recommend to someone researching affiliate marketing as the basis of a home business is James Martell’s Affiliate Marketers Handbook.

This e-book outlines the 8-Steps you must take to succeed with affiliate programs on the Net.

James Martell, a bona-fide expert in Internet affiliate programs shares the insider secrets that have propelled him to the top of the major search engines in three competitive industries: credit cards, cell phones and satellite TV.

This is a complete training program in a downloadable PDF format, written in plain English, that spells out a step-by-step system that virtually guarantees that your home business will be making money from affiliate programs on the Internet by the completion of Step-8.

You get easy to understand text and 107 helpful illustrations to guide you through the exact process of building high-traffic websites as an marketer for major companies' affiliate programs.

The guide is not at all complex. It provides simple practical advice that will help you get affiliate home business website to the top of the search engines.

The methods are amazingly simple. There are no tricks, just solid advice. Alas, its not free. But you get a program that is a little easier for a beginner to follow.

Here is a brief video about his programs and how he can help you get your online business started.

Domains Needed

Unfortunately, most companies that EMPLOY affiliate marketing systems require that the affiliate have his own domain (website). The free domains you can pick up on many sites will not suffice. You need your own .com.

I am partial to Site Build It. This website was built using this program, which I consider ideal for those of us with little website design experience.

The program’s manual takes you step-by-step, from finding a good "niche", to keyword research, to a simple page building module that just involves stacking "blocks" of text to make your page, to sophisticated page submission and tracking tools.

Furthermore, I have found the company to be very responsive to my needs and quite trustworthy and reputable. It has a great reputation in the internet world. I really can't recommend it highly enough.

SBI websites are consistently among the top ranked sites on the Internet. If you're interested a having your own website, but still have questions or doubts, you can get answers from actual SBI owners.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing is not as easy as some internet gurus would have you believe. You need to find the right niche and spend time and effort writing content for your website.

Then you have to market your site to get sufficient traffic to make your affiliate website pay.

However, if you find the right formula, affiliate marketing can be quite lucrative. Your site will make money 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You will not get rich overnight, but you can create a nice replacement income for yourself. It's definitely worth looking into.