Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Affiliate marketing is a popular marketing model where a business compensates independent publishers to generate leads or traffic to their businesses' products and/or services. The publishers are independent affiliates, and the commission payment motivates them to seek ways to advertise the business on their websites. In most cases, businesses provide links and banners on these websites and make money each time a visitor clicks on those links and comes to the business's site.

To get high commissions, however, the affiliate marketer must have a high traffic volume and attract enough targeted traffic. It also helps if the publisher can establish a good reputation and a devoted customer base. For these reasons, many companies offer generous commissions. But for the affiliate marketer, the big question is: Does affiliate marketing work? And does it bring in the dough? Let's examine both of these questions.

First off, let's look at the basics of affiliate marketing. For this discussion, we'll use Twitter as our illustration. Most internet marketers follow up on Twitter, blogging about the day's activities. If you have the time and the inclination, you can even turn your Twitter into a full-fledged business, by posting links to your blog or website, along with detailed information about your products or services. Some affiliate marketing strategies use social media marketing strategies, such as creating social media profiles and sharing promotional information through social media channels.

When it comes to affiliate marketing program basics, you should be prepared to search quite a bit to come across good programs. There are literally hundreds of thousands of opportunities for affiliate marketing programs, ranging from online auction sites to e-commerce sites, as well as blogs and general trade forums. It's best to join several affiliate marketing programs, as you'll likely find some that cater to your specific interests. For example, if you're interested in pets, you might find a blog or an affiliate program promoting cat care products or kitty litter and another promoting healthy dog food.

One important strategy for making affiliate marketing easy is to make sure you have your own blog. This allows you to interact with your target audience, share useful tips and information, answer questions, and so forth. Blogs are also an excellent way to promote your affiliate partners, as they can help you attract new affiliates to your website, as well as help you build credibility and a reputation for being an expert in your field. A quality blog allows you to earn much more than a simple link, as readers tend to trust online information presented by someone they trust. Many people spend a great deal of their time reading other people's blogs, so you'll want yours to be both informative and entertaining.

Finally, another useful strategy for affiliate marketing is becoming an influential social media user. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn all allow users to create profiles that showcase their interests and hobbies, which can greatly increase the reach of your affiliate marketing efforts. Simply by making use of these platforms to connect with your target audience, you can greatly expand your circle of influence, as these sites provide an excellent way for you to showcase your knowledge and expertise on the topics of your choosing. By connecting with influencers in your particular niche, you can build relationships based on common interests and ideas, and this can in turn lead to significant sales for you and your affiliates.

There's no doubt that affiliate marketing can bring a great deal of work and revenue to even the most unprofessional internet marketer. However, it's important that you realize that you can work from home as an affiliate marketer and still get paid. If you're willing to put in the effort, there are several opportunities to work from home doing affiliate marketing.

The key to success in affiliate marketing is picking the right affiliate programs to work with. Before you pick a merchant or provider, make sure you do your research into the affiliate program itself. Many affiliate programs will only pay out commissions to affiliate marketers who promote their merchant directly, without any connection to the merchant himself. Other affiliate programs are a lot more open and allow merchants to be involved in the affiliate marketing process from the get-go, providing greater revenue opportunities for the merchant.