The concept of affiliate marketing itself is relatively simple.  You agree to use ethical practices to put together some form of advertising or convincing writing that results in a customer being motivated enough to use your coded link to purchase a product or service.  The owner of the product agrees to pay you a commission based on the purchases that are made.  That is it in a nutshell, so go out and start advertising.  But you say whoa, whoa there must be more to it than that, and you are right there is much much more.

Affiliates are often called “publishers”—they publish articles or other forms of advertising that motivate their clients/readers to take an action.  In most cases that is a purchase of a product.  There are also affiliate programs that are based on actions; these will pay a commission based on the collection of information.

Have you ever tried to get a quote on car insurance?  Have you noticed that you are never able to get any kind of information until you submit your name, email, and phone number?  This is the favored method of advertising for the insurance, loans, real estate, and even legal services industry.  This type of affiliate marketing is called CPA or cost per action.

Companies are willing to pay affiliates for the leads that they generate which will enable the company to follow up on that lead with a letter, email or phone call.  CPA affiliation is generally harder to get started than simple product services.  The companies which offer CPA affiliation will want to know what you as an affiliate intend to do to drive traffic to their offer.  Since their income is based on a valid lead, you will have to demonstrate that you are capable of collecting that information.

The largest affiliate marketing company on the internet today is Amazon-dot-com.  Amazon offers affiliates the ability to sign up and setup advertising systems for just about any product you can imagine.  From books to merchandise you can sell it all.  Their widgets and “A” store system enables you to select merchandise across the whole catalog of products and assemble your own collection of goods/books  that you may wish to promote.

Many of the other larger retail outlets from Wal-Mart to Target to Best Buy also have affiliate programs.  Of course there are all sorts of smaller companies and individual stores that offer affiliate relationships.  Depending on the “niche” that you select, there are affiliate networks that can provide a way for you to promote all kinds of specialized products. In all of these cases your job as an affiliate is to figure out how to fill a need for your prospective customer that will cause him/her to visit the seller and make a purchase.

In some cases this can be a simple review of the product; in other cases it can be an elaborate store front type of website.  As an affiliate your task is to present a unique perspective for why the customer should use your link to visit the merchandiser.  In the advertising world this is called a unique selling proposition or perspective (USP).  In other words, “what is your hook?”

The next area of affiliate products is the information product.  This is the “how to” type of product or software that is typically available for instant download.  For just about any kind of information that you may be seeking there is probably a book or video solution that is available.  These kinds of products tend to pay much greater commissions. Which can be as much a 100% in the case of a short report that the product owner is offering as an inducement for the affiliate to send him more customers.

This includes such companies as Clickbank or Nanacast or PayDotCom and numbers of software and service providers.  There are also web services like hosting, domain name purchasing, auto-responders, shopping cart providers and search engine optimization which will pay a commission for new customers.  Finally, there are a number of independent internet marketing experts that offer products in marketing and internet systems productivity who pay their joint venture (JV’s) partners/affiliates handsomely.

You can see that the choices for affiliate marketing are huge, so avoid the temptation to jump in with both feet and try to represent them all.  Your task is to get very clear about what or whom you wish to to represent.  Before you make a selection there are several points to consider.

• Does it sell well on the internet- some products do not.
• Is it possible to compete with the other players/affiliates in this market?
• Can I bring a unique perspective (UPS) to the marketing effort here?
• What can I add to the product that will make the client want to purchase through my link?

You will also need a strategy for your marketing efforts.  For each site that you set up you should have a marketing plan that you can follow to enable you to evaluate your progress as you go along.  Don’t fall into the trap of chasing shiny objects that look pretty with out insuring that your efforts will be rewarded.  Be aware that the general internet statistics suggest that a conversion rate of visitors into buyers is one to two percent of visitors to a site, which means that you will need to learn you will need to learn to drive traffic in more than one fashion.

Many of the above topics will be explored thoroughly in the coming weeks.  Stay Tuned