Many Faces of Affiliate Marketing

Written by Jeffrey Sison Monday, 17 January 2011 02:11

If you don't have the time or the resources to create your very own product and sell it, then don't fret, you can still make money on the internet through affiliate marketing. This method of marketing is derived from the age old practice of getting commission for referring a sale to someone. If you really think about it, that's basically what affiliate marketing is about, getting a commission for a referred sale.

If you don't have the time or the resources to create your very own product and sell it, then don't fret, you can still make money on the internet through affiliate marketing. This method of marketing is derived from the age old practice of getting commission for referring a sale to someone. If you really think about it, that's basically what affiliate marketing is about, getting a commission for a referred sale.

This method of marketing is really popular over the internet because it doesn't require a lot of resources from the main vendor (the one with the product) when it comes to advertising campaigns. All of the advertising and marketing is being done by the partners who use their own unique methods to drive sales. When properly executed, this can be really profitable for both the main merchant and the talented partner.

Not everything is about direct selling, there are a lot of ways that affiliate marketing works for people to make money. It can be anything from simply driving traffic or writing reviews to influence people into getting that particular product. Here are some of the types that you'll run across if you're interested in affiliate marketing.

1. Search Affiliates - These utilize pay-per-click search engines to drive traffic to the merchant. Simply put, the more the audience clicks on the given links that goes to the merchant, the more money the partner gets. This is greatly impacted by search engine optimization rankings.

2. Product Reviews - These sites don't directly sell any merchandise or product. What these sites do is that they take two or more similar products and reviews them to the best of their abilities. If the reader decides to purchase because of those reviews and through a link that's placed by the publisher, he or she will get a commission from the vendor.

3. Blogs - These can sometimes be good or bad depending on the situation. I love the blogs out there that really recommend something because it is good and it is really something that is worth sharing, the income comes secondary. But there are also unscrupulous blog owners out there that simply push affiliate products just for the money, so buyer beware.

4. Mailing Lists - These are the natural evolution of the direct mailing methods that were so popular during the 80s and 90s. These lists are usually built up over years of giving people free (and useful) content. Savvy marketers and list owners will leverage this and will use this huge list to occasionally push their advertising campaigns on the readers.

5. New Directory listings - These are usually places where the newest affiliate programs are located. This is where marketers usually converge to check out what's the next big thing and get on it before their competitors do. If they can be first, then they can gain the most before it becomes saturated and it becomes time to move on.