What is Affiliate Marketing?

If you've been online for any length of time, you may have heard terms you're not familiar with. The most common is "Affiliate Marketing" but you could have heard references to other variations as well, such as Affiliate Programs, Associate Programs, and just plain affiliate or associates.

So what exactly do these terms mean? Well quite simply, affiliate marketing is a way to make money online just by promoting other people's products. You don't have to create a product of your own, and you don't have to find wholesalers to buy products from either.

Instead, you simply find online stores and services which offer an affiliate program. Then you sign up for that program - and signing up for an affiliate program is usually free by the way.

Once you've signed up for the affiliate program, you usually have a special login area where you can go to get ready made ads for promoting the store or service you've signed up with. Now, there are many types of advertisements ready and waiting for you. Some affiliate programs will only have a few, but some will have many.

Some of the types of advertisements they'll have available for you to use include website banners and buttons, product pictures, pre-written emails, and pre-written articles.

I won't go into the details of how to use each of these yet, but suffice it to say that most affiliate programs have tools to make getting started much easier for you.

Once you've signed up for the affiliate program you'll want to start promoting it. There are tons of ways to do this online easily, cheaply, and often even for free. The goal for you is to get targeted traffic to the affiliate program you signed up with. And when people buy a product or service through your affiliate link, you'll earn money.

This money is referred to as sales commissions. In fact, affiliate programs are very much like independant sales jobs. You simply advertise or market the products and services to targeted consumers. And when those consumers make a purchase, you are credited with the sale.

Most affiliate programs pay once each month, but there are several which pay every two weeks. And a few only pay once every three months. I'd recommend avoiding those in the beginning, because it's discouraging to start earning money only to realize it will be months before that money actually reaches your bank account.

Using affiliate programs is a great way to get started making money online. And I'll go into much further details about how it all works in future articles.