Affiliate Marketing

According to Wikipedia, "Affiliate marketing typically refers to an electronic commerce version of the traditional agent/referral fee sales channel concept. An e-commerce affiliate is a website which links back to an e-commerce site such as Amazon.com." Simply put, it is selling another person's product online for a payment.

While the concept is simple, succeeding in affiliate marketing is much more difficult. You are competing with all the other affiliates selling the same product, so you need a unique website that attracts visitors in it's own right to succeed. Even then there are some major gotchas.

For instance, if your visitor can see the affiliate link that goes from your site to the merchant's site, many times he sill type in the merchant's site without your affiliate information. Then he will purchase the product directly , and you lose out on your commission. There are a number of ways to overcome this, some more effective than others.

First, you can use a linkcloaker so the link doesn't show up in the web browser's status bar. This is only effective until your visitor reaches the target website. After that, he can see the affiliate link in his browser's address box. If the merchant has already read the cookie, and you receive credit for anything the customer buys after that, no problem.

If however, your merchant doesn't follow you customer until he purchases, you may want to purchase a domain name and forward it to the merchant's site using masking. This will cause the address box of the browser to say whatever you told it to while the customer is on the website. this is a very effective method.

The best affiliate marketers are hooked into numerous merchants. They make money coming and going by selling everything from ebooks, to software, to garden implements, and cooking equipment.

You should become a member of the Pepperjam Network and Commission Junction. These are both affiliate networks that hook merchants and affiliates together. The have everything from e-books to furniture.

Also, while the commissions are low, you can earn a bit at amazon.com in their affiliate program at Amazons associates page. They have banners and other kinds of ads available that you can use in your marketing, such as:

While the image above is an example, it is also hooked to our Amazon Asociates membership. If you click on the book, and go ahead to purchase it, we get a commission on the sale. By the way the book is the gold standard when it comes to affiliate marketing. Rosalind Gardner is indisputably one of the very best.

Then there's Clickbank. This affiliate network specializes in intangibles such as ebooks and software. While this network is one of the most important, it poses a special problem. If you don't cloak your links, your customers can go into the landing page using their own clickbank link, and make the commission on their own sale, thereby getting a discount on the purchase.

To solve the link problem with clickbank, you can use the affiliate link cloaker at www.reviewopportunity.com. This free script will create the html for your link that you can then paste into your web page. also, you can purchase a domain name to forward to the Clickbank page. A very good and inexpensive domain registrar is www.cyberspaceregister.com.

For many products you can hookup to an affiliate network. Many affiliate merchants will subscribe to the network and the network provides a central place to get all kinds of products and services to sell. Also, the network will handle the money so you can be sure you'll get what you have earned. Three of the best affiliate networks are Commission Junction, the Pepperjam Network, and DoubleClick Performics.

Some reliable affiliate merchants are listed below. We have found these companies and marketers to be absolutely first rate.