Step 1: Understand how affiliate marketing works

You probably have heard of affiliate marketing before but in order to become a successful affiliate you will need to fully understand the concept. What exactly is affiliate marketing? In this introduction you'll find an explanation of the basics of affiliate marketing. 

The principle of affiliate marketing

The principles of affiliate marketing are pretty easy… A merchant who wants to sell more may decide to install an affiliate program. Using this affiliate program, he will attract webmasters of other sites, so called publishers, who are willing to sell or promote the merchants product on their site. In exchange the webmaster that promotes the merchant gets a commission. The handling and shipping is all taken care of by the merchant, basically you only send him a new customer or prospect.

‘Send’ him a sale, how do you mean?

The internet is based on links that you can click to go to another web site. Just the same with affiliate marketing: the merchant provides a unique link that the publisher places on his web site. When people click on that unique link, the visitor is taken to the merchant’s site.

When am I paid?

Sometimes just clicking the link will earn you money. This is called a pay per click affiliate program. Most of the times however, just referring a visitor won’t do to get paid. Often the referred visitor will have to buy something: these are pay per sale affiliate programs.

There’s a third type of program, namely the pay per lead affiliate programs. This type of affiliate programs requires the referred visitor to act in a certain way before the publisher is paid. The most classical example of pay per lead affiliate programs is the one where a referred visitor needs to subscribe to a newsletter. When the visitor clicks the publisher’s link and subscribes to the newsletter, the publisher gets paid.

You’ll find more information on payment options on the page dealing with affiliate marketing payment methods.

Why do merchants start an affiliate program?

For a merchant the goal of having an affiliate program is to earn even more money with their own website: the more sites that promote his products, the more sales he will make. Pretty simple and just as in real life…

Why do webmasters join affiliate programs?

Basically a webmaster has 2 reasons why he wants to join an affiliate program. First being an obvious one, is making money and financing his web site or even make a living out of it.

However, there’s also a second reason: a webmaster should always be interested in improving his website. He can do this by adding links to his site. Affiliate programs allow webmasters to offer their visitors links to products that are interesting for that target group.

Basics on How to join

Most affiliate programs are very easy to join and easy to stop with and it’s free (if you have to pay to participate, don’t even consider joining) . You fill in an online form on the merchant’s site and the merchant provides you with a unique link… Once you have placed the link on your site, you are ready to go.