Affiliate Marketing
What if a friend told you they would give you 10 dollars if you just gave them 5 dollars back? Sounds like a pretty good deal doesn’t it? That’s pretty much exactly how affiliate marketing works. Someone will advertise your product or service on their site. If anyone who clicks on your site’s link from their site makes a purchase the advertiser gets a commission. It’s a great deal and anyone selling anything should have affiliates and promote affiliates.
If it wasn’t for affiliate marketing the Internet wouldn’t be as big as it is today. There are plenty of sites that make money only off affiliate and advertising profits. Have you heard of Wikipedia or Youtube? Chances are if you haven’t been sleeping in a cave for the past 5 years you’ve heard of these sites. Both of these sites generate huge amounts of money just from providing interesting cool content that will attract a lot of viewers. This is why you can leverage your traffic by also make money on the backend by promoting your competitor's products. That might sound a little backwards because why would you want to take someone away from your site to buy something? Well, not everyone is going to buy from you and if their not buying from you then why wouldn’t you want to make some money off of them anyway? Makes sense now doesn’t it?
Not only will this drive the traffic to your site but it can be a good way to pass along some link juice. Starting an affiliate program and finding affiliates isn't very difficult either. There are third party sites that will manage them for you. Linkconnector.com is a good site to find affiliates for any type of product or service. Commission Junction or cj.com is also a great place to go but it can be a bit more difficult to be a provider on their site. Lastly if you sell a digital product then Clickbank.com is fantastic.
When deciding how much to pay affiliates, try and give them as much as you possibly can. You’ll want to attract a high volume of them to get more exposure and traffic to your site. Plus remember, you only pay them if they get someone to purchase from you, so what do you have to lose?
