One of the best methods of building a large list of leads quickly is with affiliate marketing. There is no money needed to begin using this technique, which means a great ROI (return on investment) for your time. In essence, affiliate marketing works like this: A company with a product or service to sell (termed a merchant in affiliate marketing) partners with website owners (or affiliates), with affiliates placing links to the merchants website on their own. The merchant gets leads and website traffic, the affiliate receives a commission on each lead they bring in.



People generally sign on as affiliates because they think that a given merchant provides a product or service which will be of interest to their visitors. Merchants and affiliates tend to partner based on relevance, meaning that both parties get what they want out of the partnership: more traffic and for the merchant, increased sales. Its a very simple thing to implement; the merchant simply gets a portion of the same traffic as does the affiliate. Since these leads will have come to the merchants site via a related site, these will be people who already are likely to be interested in the product or service in question. This means conversion rates are high among these visitors.

Getting back to increased traffic, thats the other way in which affiliate marketing does a lot of good for the merchant. Higher traffic means a higher search engine ranking for the merchants site; meaning even more traffic for that site. Its a self sustaining marketing tool.

Price is one of the things which makes affiliate marketing such an attractive avenue of promotion to merchants. Affiliates can be paid oin several different ways, all of which are less costly to the merchant than conventional advertising. PPC, or Pay Per Click is a payment model in which the affiliate earns a commission each time a visitor goes to the merchants site through the link on their page. PPA, or Pay Per Action is when the affiliate receives a commission each time a visitor who has reached the merchant through their site performs a specific action, such as opting in to an email list. PPM, or Pay Per Impression is when an affiliate is paid just for having the merchants link on their site. Finally, PPS or Pay Per Sale is when an affiliate receives a commission each time a visitor who reached the merchants website through theirs makes a purchase. Obviously, PPA and PPS are more common arrangements, being much more beneficial to the merchant.

However, merchants can decide which model works best for their specific needs in an affiliate marketing program. Relevant websites with a lot of content will be the favored affiliate partners of merchants since these sites tend to produce more highly targeted leads for the merchant.

Ease of use of the affiliates site will also be considered. After all, a site which cant keep visitors there will have them pressing their back buttons rather than surfing through links on the page. A site which is interesting means more conversions for the merchant.

Merchants can gain a lot from the proper use of affiliate marketing: more leads, more sales and more exposure.