Affiliate Marketing is as old as business itself. An Affiliate or Associate is a "middleman", someone who brings merchant and buyer together and collects a fee for doing so.



There is nothing in this that relates to the Internet at all except that the World Wide Web makes the process easier

A merchant is an expert on the products they sell. They achieve more by focusing on that and outsourcing their sales and marketing. What could be better than a sales staff that have no steady wage but only earn when they sell?

An Affiliate regards the "no sale no wages" offer as a good deal because their share of the profit is large and they can concentrate on the marketing. The Affiliate has no cares about inventory, packaging, shipping or customer service. For Information products, like an ebook costing $100, an Affiliate will typically earn $50.

This is more than the author earns and considering the costs of the merchant, the affiliate earns most for least effort.

The shopper does not care about any of this. She or he just wants the best information about the matters that concern them and the best deals.

Finding an affiliate website by typing her search term into a search engine the shopper finds useful background information and product reviews written by an affiliate. She may click on one of the links on the affiliate website through to the merchant"s website and on reassuring herself that everything looks OK buy then and there.

Or perhaps she could get some extra information by signing up to the Newsletter from the Affiliate website or from the Merchant. A sale may then happen a few days or even a few months later

This is clearly a win for the affiliate; a win for the merchant and a win for the shopper. And that is why the Affiliate Model of doing business is so popular.

There is a downside to this rosy picture. Because it is so easy to enter, thousands of newcomers sign up and become Affiliates with little knowledge of how the whole process works or even how to get started.

A good general knowledge of Internet Business is essential if one is to succeed as an affiliate. In addition you have to be able to write about the area in which you are selling or to be able to hire a writer. Likewise the technical part of website building have got to be mastered or outsourced

That being said it is a very attractive lifestyle and after the learning curve has been climbed the earning curve can be very lucrative indeed.