If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is all about, this is your chance to know it.Affiliate marketing, also known as referral marketing is a partnership between a merchant and an affiliate, whereby the affiliate (that’s you) refers potential customers to a merchant’s website. If the potential customer makes a purchase, the affiliate earns a commission on that sale. In simple terms, affiliate marketing is a sales job that pays straight commission, without the hassle of cold calling. Thousands of merchants have affiliate programs, from small internet sales companies to companies like Dell, Amazon and EBay; affiliate programs have proven themselves to be an inexpensive way for the merchant to build sales. Many affiliate marketers, describe the relationship of an affiliate with a merchant using the example of a traditional sales organization. In this example, the affiliate is the sales professional, while the merchant is the sales manager .I disagree. As the affiliate marketer, you are the one sending leads to the merchant who is then responsible for converting those leads to sales and sharing a portion of the revenue with you. In my view, you would be better served to view yourself as the sales manager. Choose carefully the companies that you want to promote. In the words of a typical sales manager “feed your eagles and starve your turkeys;” and be ruthlessly pragmatic about it. If one merchant is not converting your visitors to sales, find another that will. There is an affiliate program for nearly every type of product that you can possibly imagine. However, for reasons which I will touch on in just a moment, I recommend that you start your affiliate marketing efforts by concentrating on information & software products. One of the things I’ll show you in this report is an easy way to separate the eagles from the turkeys before you invest your time in promoting them.
