Affiliate Programs are one way you can make money on the internet. If you are not familiar with the concept, it goes something like this; you are working as a self-employed commission salesman who sells goods or services for various companies. Instead of booking appointments and making sales calls you use the internet to generate business for these companies, who in turn pay you a commission for each sale.
If you expect to make any real money you will have to 'work', in spite of what the 'hucksters' will try and tell you. You know all those wonderful promises of making millions while you sleep on the beach in Hawaii ads. Well, forget them! Unless you find one that really delivers what it promises, then let me know so I can go sleep on the beach also.
I am no expert on the subject of affiliate programs but I do offer you here what I DO know about them. Be sure to do some REAL research so you can make an informed decision about affiliate programs for yourself.
There are as many companies as you can imagine offering affiliate programs, so you won't have trouble finding one that suits your area of knowledge/interest. The mystery of course, is how to actually make money by participating in the programs.
One business model would be to create a web site which generates traffic on it's own merit. Then you include various links (ads, ad buttons, ad banners etc.) which directs traffic to the company you are affiliated with. Some of the products/courses on this site are affiliated with me. If some of my readers see something that interests them and they decide to buy something, then this publication would receive a commission. It is sort of like providing advertising space in a magazine, and instead of charging for the space, you charge each time the ad generates a customer.
Of course for this to work, you have to create a site which generates traffic (readers) on it's own merits, which is exactly what I am attempting to do with Work From Home Jobs news . In other words, people will visit a site, not because of the affiliate ads, but to see what the site has of interest to them. While there, they may see an ad of interest to them and respond to it. But the ad and it's product or service was not the reason for visiting the site. I hope I am making myself clear.
Another business model goes something like this: you create a web site which only exists to direct people to the company you are affiliated with. In order to generate traffic to this site you will have to 'buy' traffic using any one or a number of companies which provide traffic generation. In short, these companies charge a fee for each 'visitor' they direct to your site. One term used is 'pay per click' whereby you agree to a fixed price per visitor (per click). Usually you set your 'bid' price for each click sent to your site, and you are bidding for 'keywords', which means the traffic generated this way is from people interested specifically in what your site offers.
For example if the affiliate you are associated with makes purple widgets, you would pay a company a fixed fee, say .10 for each visitor they send to your site. The visitors sent would have been using a search engine specifically looking for a source of purple widgets. This way the visitor has demonstrated an interest in what you are offering as opposed to a random visit which would be of far less value than a visitor 'searching' for what you are selling.
There are also a lot of companies selling different 'traffic' campaigns which are not generated from search engines. My opinion of this type of traffic, is that it probably has merit, but there are probably a lot of companies providing absolutely useless, if not, completely fraudulent traffic. Companies offering a large number of clicks for small amounts of dollars are probably not going to be a good investment. However, there are exceptions to every rule and you may find some really good, inexpensive traffic generators.
As I said earlier, I am no expert in this area, but hope this article provides you with a basic platform to start your research. I am certain that you can actually make money from affiliate programs and I am also certain you can loose a lot of money from affiliate programs.
The following page is a summary of my own affiliate 'experiment'. You will find it interesting and the source of information the 'experts' are not likely to tell you.
As stated in the heading to this article ---DO YOUR RESEARCH !
By Jim Taylor, Publisher, Work From Home Jobs news
