What is Affiliate Marketing?
Posted by: Adriana Post date: February 22nd, 2010
Affiliate marketing can be a great avenue to increase traffic to your online business’s website and generate additional income. This is not an endeavor that should be embarked upon without conducting thorough research, however.
Many people are lured into the idea of affiliate marketing based on the notion that they will be able to make a quick buck without doing much work or preparation. The truth is that in order for affiliate marketing to be profitable to your business, it is going to take time, effort, research, and perseverance. If affiliate marketing is something that you are interested in, take this quiz and evaluate the responses so you can learn more about what affiliate marketing is and how you can use it to your advantage.
1. Affiliate marketing is an Internet-based method of marketing that…
a) uses one website to drive web traffic to another website
b) is based on the idea of revenue sharing
c) Both a and b
C – With affiliate marketing, a business offers compensation to affiliates for each visitor or customer that comes about as a result of the affiliates marketing endeavors. Methods of affiliate marketing include search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and display advertising. In order to be compensated, the majority of affiliate programs utilize revenue sharing or cost per sale (CPS). Other affiliate programs use cost per action (CPA) or cost-per-click (CPC).
2. The affiliate marketing industry has four key players. They are:
a) the merchant, the network, blogs, and web banners
b) the merchant, the network, the affiliate, and the customer
c) the retailer, the publisher, search engines, and text advertisements
B -The merchant is also known as the retailer or brand. The network acts as a liaison between the affiliate and the merchant. The affiliate is also known as the publisher or an e-commerce affiliate, which is a website that links back to e-commerce sites like Amazon.com with the aim of earning a commission on referred product sales. Lastly, the customer is the person who views or experiences the marketing.
3. In order to be a successful affiliate marketer, you will need the following things:
a) Your own website and a newsletter
b) An e-book and your own product to promote
c) Multiple e-mail addresses and your own product to promote
A. In order to be a top-selling affiliate marketer, you will need to have both your own website and a free newsletter. The website will help you collect e-mails addresses from customers so that you can build a client list, and providing customers with a newsletter will help you stay fresh in your customers’ minds as well as to earn their trust and built your credibility.
4. True or false: You don’t need a product of your own to promote as an affiliate marketer.
True – It is not necessary for an affiliate marketer to have their own product. An affiliate marketer is free to promote virtually anyone’s product.
5. True or false: As an affiliate marketer, you are in charge of handling product shipping, support, and refunds.
False – Product shipping, support, and refunds are not handled by the affiliate marketer. These tasks are covered by the merchant. An affiliate marketer is not expected to invest in anything more than advertising costs.
Now that you know a little bit more about what affiliate marketing is and how it works, you can get on your way to using this effective money-making model to increase web traffic and sales for yourself.
One of the best guides I’ve come around that teaches affiliate marketing is the Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner. Have you read it? Implemented it? What kind of success did you have with it? I’d love to hear about your affilaite marketing success.
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Dennis E