Funnel Affiliate Marketing

The internet has certainly changed the way that affiliate marketing has always been done. When affiliate marketing was first introduced, there was quite a bit of hype and hoopla from all the big time marketers saying how great it would be to have a 100% success rate with affiliate marketing. Not only did these marketers say this would be incredibly easy, but they went on to claim that it would be the best way to make money online.

As time has passed and more marketers have tried affiliate marketing they have also made changes to how they approach their overall campaign. The basic concept is really simple. In affiliate marketing, business signs up other businesses or individuals, called affiliates, to sell its product. The affiliates are often webmasters or influential internet marketers who use advertiser's ads and pay a specified amount as either a referral fee or per sale payment based on their performance to promote the advertiser's products.

The problem with the original affiliate marketing business model was that there was no guarantee that the businesses would be successful. For every unsuccessful business there was another that said they had a successful affiliate marketing business model. This created a level of anxiety among marketers who felt that if they didn't get a share of the action that they may not be as successful. To combat this problem, the original affiliate marketing business model included a revenue share for all the marketers involved.

The revenue sharing involved here was in the form of a commission. There was an agreed upon amount of commission that the affiliate marketer would receive. That commission would be split between the marketer and the product owner or publisher. For example, an affiliate would create a website and promote a product. At the end of the promotion, the marketer would give the affiliate a share of the commission as payment.

Although this was a great revenue sharing opportunity for the affiliate, it soon became unviable because of two factors. First, the commission wasn't very substantial. It was more like a bonus for promoting the product because the money was good enough to live on, but the actual value of the product wasn't being developed or enhanced. The second problem was that the traffic coming to the site from the ad campaign wasn't particularly targeted and many of the visitors were just clicking random links off of the search engine result pages to find what they were looking for. By contrast, when online businesses began using paid ads such as Google Adsense, there was a much greater focus on attracting the right target market to the site and these were targeted visitors who were already interested in the product or service on offer.

Because of these two problems, affiliate marketing began to move away from the traditional methods and towards new methods including video marketing and blogging. Through these newer methods, affiliate marketers could establish a presence on the web, create a product and then promote it through content creation. Bloggers and video marketers discovered how to create short presentations and turn them into viral videos that could be shared with millions of people all over the world. This ability to reach target markets created a massive advantage for internet marketers, which is why so many online businesses are enjoying tremendous success today.

With the emergence of social networking and the ability to connect with millions of people through social networks, the opportunities for affiliate marketing on the web have grown even further. Through this type of marketing, marketers can attract people by providing free information, promote their own business or earn revenue by facilitating advertising. In essence, this allows for unlimited revenue since web traffic can be tightly controlled and the number of visitors to an enclosure can be easily controlled. This has made it possible for organizations such as JVZoo to create a tightly-knit community that is comprised of thousands of members, all focused on one objective - to experience the power of the Internet and make money.

By using modern technology, affiliate marketing programs have been made available that work just like pay-per-click programs, but instead of paying for each visitor a fee, they pay an affiliate marketer per sale. In essence, it's like being paid only if you get a sale! This has allowed affiliates to get paid in a number of different ways, which has increased their leverage and potential for success. By implementing changes that allow affiliates to make money without actually selling a product, the business model becomes completely flexible, allowing affiliate marketers to put an end to their involvement with affiliate programs and instead become involved with the business model only to make referrals of other affiliate marketers who are generating revenue for the company.