What is Affiliate Marketing (brief)?
By Edward Gause

In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is the act of selling someone else’s product or service for a portion of, or commission on each sale that you make.

Affiliate marketing attracts a lot of people towards online marketing because you don't need to have your own products to get started making money online. You can start making money just by selling, or even just trying to sell, other people’s products.

Starting to make money online with affiliate marketing is relatively quick and easy. All that one has to do is to sign up as an affiliate for an online company that offers affiliate programs. An alternative method, and usually an easier one, is to sign up as a member of an affiliate network (a network that hosts a variety of affiliate programs for different online merchants or retailers).

Signing up is usually free, although some merchants may require you to purchase their product or service first to be eligible.

When you sign up with an affiliate marketing program, you are usually required to fill out a form containing information about yourself. Some affiliate programs may also require you to present the URL of your website and describe its contents. This will allow the retailers to verify that you actually have a website with contents that are relevant to their products. Some affiliate programs, however, won’t require you to have a website. After filling out the form and all, you are then allowed to choose the affiliate programs you want to promote.

After signing up with an affiliate program and being an actual affiliate, you are now ready to start making money. Often, the merchant provides you with banners, text ads and in some cases, email ads that link to the merchant's web site. You can post these ads on your website or email your opt-in list.

If you don't have a website or your own mailing list, you can still make money as an affiliate by submitting ads to various classified ad sites or ezine publications that accept publications. When done responsibly, you can even promote your affiliate link in many forums.

With many options available, affiliate marketing is undoubtedly the most popular and the easiest way to make money online. How much money you can make from affiliate marketing depends on the amount of effort you put into it. A dedicated and hard working affiliate can certainly earn more compared to those affiliates who would simply sign up and forget about the program later.

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About Author:
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Edward Gause is webmaster of the Honesty in Internet
Marketing and publishes the Honest Online Marketing Tips
Newsletter, a weekly ezine targeting the interests of
novice internet marketers. When you get the chance, visit:
http://www.honest-marketing.com