What is “Affiliate Marketing”?

Affiliate Marketing is one method in which merchants increase their web presence, and therefore sales making potential, by placing links and banners on other sites (publisher sites) and reward clicks on these links and banners by paying a commission.

Commission may be paid per click, per lead, or most commonly, per sale.

Merchants run these affiliate (associate) programs by using an affiliate network provider or by using in-house (independent) tracking software.

Whatever subject your current site caters for, you are almost certain to be able to find a merchant to match.

Once accepted, merchants will provide you with all the advertising and tracking codes which you need to add to your site. These come in the form of text links, banners of differing size, and sometimes complete datafeeds.

In a nutshell, you send visitors to the merchant site, they buy something, you get paid. Look at affiliate marketing as you running a small store for a larger mall.

With practice and patience it is possible to make thousands of $ per month.