According to a study conducted by Jupiter research, over two billion dollars in referral fees were paid out to affiliates for marketing and selling company products. Due to the internet and social media outlet sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIN, making extra money as an affiliate has never been easier.
What affiliate marketing is not, it is not a get rich quick scheme. You are simply not going to post a couple links on Craigslist and expect to make a million dollars. It does not work that way. Just like anything else you have to put the effort in.
Start by choosing a product or service, that you would buy or use, from a reputable company. The company you work with should be easily accessible through email, phone, or regular mail and their contact information should be readily displayed on their website. If the company is hard to get a hold of, then you can probably imagine they will be hard to deal with when it comes time to get paid.
Once you have the product or service that you want to sell start with the obvious places to market such as your friends list on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIN. If you don’t have an account with any of these popular social media outlets, now would be the time to do so. Don’t forget about starting a Twitter account and shooting out tweets on the items you are trying to sell.
Then hit the blogging scene. You can start a blog for free on Blogger and write about the product or service you are trying to sell. Lets say you are selling vegetable seeds. You can write about the best time to plant them, when to harvest, and so on. You get the point. Write a new blog post at the minimum every three days.
You can also use pay per click advertising on sites such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing. For a nominal per click charge, these popular search engines will send visitors directly to the product or service you are trying to sell.
One final method to a successful affiliate marketing campaign is through the use of article marketing. Just like you would with the blogging method above, you write pertinent articles on the product or service you are trying to sell. Instead of posting these articles on your blog you submit them to various article directories.
You can make money from affiliate marketing. Just make sure you pick a product that you truly believe in and then put the effort in to sell it. Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation for everyone. The company sells more of their products and you make a nice commission for doing so.
