Affiliate Marketing

As an affiliate, you don't have to create quality products, process orders, handle shipping or worry about customers support and complaints. All that is done for you by the merchants. You simply pick the best available products from the best available merchants and send people their way, then get paid "cold cash" (affiliate commissions) whenever they buy.

As long as you can refer potential customers to the merchants — be it through a website, forum, blog or mailing list — you are ready to start cashing in.

In addition, this will give you the ability to earn while you learn, as most quality affiliate programs will provide you with valuable marketing tools to assist you in promoting their products.

Types of Commission

The first type is Cost-per-Click (CPC) where you are paid each time one of your visitors clicks the link or banner through to the merchant's website. In this scheme, the affiliate gets paid a certain amount (usually small) even if the visitor they referred does not purchase anything from the merchant's site. However, because of click fraud and many other questionable tactics, this form of remuneration has been largely phased out and nowadays most companies either use CPA (Cost-per-Action) or CPS (Cost-per-Sale).

Rather than paying up-front for advertising space, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into a pre-defined action (customer lead created, sale completed, etc.) This is often referred to as performance-based marketing, and can be further classified under two popular types:

• Pay-Per-Lead — The affiliate is paid whenever the visitor they referred to the merchant's site fills up an application form or requests a quote.

• Pay-Per-Sale — These programs (also known as Partnership Programs) pay either a fixed dollar amount or a percentage of sales generated by your referrals.