Affiliate Marketing Meets Social Media

Affiliate marketing is simply a more sophisticated approach to sales promotion. In simple terms, affiliate marketing is a revenue-based promotion strategy in which an affiliate, usually an Internet based one, compensates a site with a specific commission for every visitor referred through the site s affiliate marketing efforts. The site, usually termed the affiliate, will only receive payment when their marketing endeavor results in a sale. Affiliate Marketing meets Social Media! The power of affiliate marketing lies in the affiliate marketer's ability to leverage social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to promote their affiliate offers.

The concept of affiliate marketing can be traced back to the early nineties, when major corporations found that it was cheaper to outsource labor to be used by their affiliates instead of hiring in-house employees. At the time, these outsource labor sites were a great way to boost sales by tapping into a larger pool of potential buyers. Today, affiliate marketing has become integral to the success of many small businesses on the Internet. Affiliate programs have grown from the traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores to a billion dollar enterprise.

The power of affiliate marketing can be attributed to the fact that it leverages both conventional and modern marketing approaches. For example, affiliate marketing utilizes the power of social media to bring consumers into direct contact with the product or service offered by a company. By allowing customers to post comments, questions or even complaints about a product or service, affiliate marketing allows a company to directly address these issues. A company may also choose to focus its resources on more specific subgroups within social media. For example, a particular niche may want to focus on beauty affiliate marketing, while another group may be interested in learning about information affiliate marketing.

Another element of affiliate marketing involves social interaction. Many companies that offer affiliate programs to encourage members to engage in discussion forums, blogs, and other forms of social interaction. The goal of these discussions is for affiliate members to learn about affiliate programs, gain new customers, and network with other affiliate marketers who share similar interests.

In addition to these efforts, affiliate marketing can take advantage of technological advances. Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter have become excellent vehicles for affiliate programs to promote their products. These websites allow users to interact with one another, which can lead to higher conversion rates. In fact, studies show that more than 80 percent of people use Facebook to find out about different products and services available.

The Internet has become one of the most important and effective ways to advertise and spread the word about any product, service or affiliate program. Companies that use affiliate marketing techniques to advertise their products and services can expect to see dramatic increases in their sales. The Internet allows for rapid spread of affiliate programs and quick engagement by its users.

It may seem difficult for someone who has little or no knowledge of the Internet to join an affiliate marketing program. Fortunately, affiliate marketing training is widely available online. Affiliate marketing training will teach an affiliate marketer how to build his or her own website, how to write affiliate marketing sales copy, and how to choose affiliate programs that are suited to the affiliate marketer's website. A comprehensive affiliate marketing training course should include comprehensive tutorials on how to choose keywords and key phrases, how to select and optimize content for key phrases, how to conduct keyword research, how to write articles to drive traffic to affiliate websites, and how to use graphics and other tools that enhance the appearance of web pages.

To be successful as an affiliate marketer, it is important to carefully select the right affiliate programs to join. There are a lot of affiliate marketing programs on the Internet, many of which are very profitable. However, it is also important for the affiliate marketer to choose affiliate marketing programs that do not require him or her to invest significant amounts of time and money. An affiliate marketing program that requires an affiliate marketer to spend large amounts of time on advertising could be considered a scam. Affiliate programs that do not require the affiliate marketer to invest large sums of money but instead require him or her to spend some time on promoting them could be considered an affiliate marketing program that is legitimate and worthwhile.