• Home
• CPA Networks
• AffiliateMarketing
• Resources
• Training
• Traffic
• SEO
• Contact Us

Online Affiliate Income - Earn Money from Home

Did you know that thousands of people, all over the world, are earning money online as affiliates. Online Affiliate marketing is a real and achievable work-from-home online opportunity, with enormous business income potential, and there are a lot of people taking advantage of it.

Super affiliates have mastered the art of online affiliate income, and are earning six and even seven figure incomes from affiliate marketing. You can do this too.

There are many business that owe their success to the benefits of Online Affiliate Marketing Programs.

What is an Affiliate?

An Affiliate, is somone who enters into an agreement with a merchant or business to promote a product or service, online or offline, in return for a commission on a sale, or simply introducing a potential customer.

Online affiliate income is not so different from the commission received by the traditional 'Rep' or company representative; the terrestrial salesmen who receives commission for sales they achieve during the course of their work as part of a land based sales team. The one major difference is that all communication with the business is over the internet, email, or via the affiliate network. All support provide is through the chanels set up by the affiliate network and will consist of banners, emails, guidelines for promotion, and terms and conditions. The terms and conditions usually define the acceptable marketing methods which may be used.

As an affiliate, you can have a work at home business without a product of your own. Your products are provided by exernal companies in an online affiliate marketing program. Some affiliates are extremely successful and make a lot of money, others struggle to make any money at all.

Affiliate commissions can be any amount agreed with the merchant or business, and can vary alot. Affiliate commission could be as little as 5%, to as much as 60% for digital products. Amazon and eBay are probably the biggest and most recognized affiliates networks, but certainly not the only ones. Those who work in the network marketing arena will have heard of Clickbank, and Commission Junction, but there are many others such as Webgains, Buy.At, Plimus, Maxbounty , Offer Vault, and many others, that big and small high street companies with their affiliate programs.

Affiliate Commission is not the only way of earning money as an affiliate, you can earn money through introducing potential clients - pay per click (PPC) or pay per action (PPA) are also common. The Affiliate system also represents enormous value to merchants; affiliate marketing represents the ultimate in performance based marketing as merchants only pay on results.

With the growth of the Internet, more and more companies have recognised the value of independent affiliates promoting their products online, and it is not unusual to find it part of a company's marketing strategy, and marketing mix. The advantages for a company include:

• Minimal overhead costs
• No employment or personnel costs
• Centralised training and resources - all provided online
• Commissions are only paid on results
• If the goods are returned, no commission is paid
• Affiliates can be selling products or services 24 hours, every day of the year
• Can sell anywhere in the world
• Minimal marketing costs for the business

As you will recognize, the affiliate system is brilliant for both companies and for affiliates.

• It works for affiliates because an affiliate can be anywhere in the world
• The affiliate doesn't need to travel to work - s/he can work online and earn a living. A real work from home solution.
• No boss to worry about
• Can manage their own time
• No ceiling to the amount of money an affiliate can earn
• The same techniques, once leared, can be applied to promote any product or service
• Doesn't need their own products
• Doesn't need to carry any stock
• Doesn't need premises, so minimal overhead costs
• Can choose which products to promote

How to Become an Affiliate?

If this is a new idea to you, you may be wondering several things:

• What is online affiliate marketing?
• How do you become an affiliate Online?
• How do you find an affiliate business online opportunity?
• How can you earn money with an online affiliate marketing program
• How can you achieve a secure online affiliate income?
   

It's surprisingly easy to become an affiliate, although it's much harder to be successful at it.

If you keep your eyes open when browsing the Internet, you will start to notice that enormous numbers of companies are recruiting affiliates and they do this is different ways.

There is a surprising range of different types of companies that recuit affiliates.

Although online affiliates are promoting producs onilne, they promote both physical products, and products that don't require a land base. An example of the range of products sold by affiliates include:

• Dating and dating sites
• Insurance
• Gardening equipment, tools and ornaments
• Training and training course
• Books
• Websites
• Web Hosting and Domains
• Equipment
• Clothes, jewellery and fashion
• Software
• Coaching and mentoring programs
• Digital products (provided as downloads)
• Financial products
• Health and Wellbeing
• Gambling and Lotteries

In fact, the list is almost endless.

When you visit a website, just look out for it. You will often see a note, or link at the bottom of the front page of a website like this: affiliates. Now, this isn't a live link, but it could be.

If you click on the link, it would normally take you to a page where you can learn about the commission offered, the terms and conditions of the agreement, and an application form.

Some affiliate agreements need a little patience as there is often a qualifying process to go through which may take several days. Many others are instant, and require no qualification at all.

A frequent requirement is a website address that you plan to promote the product or service on.

So how do you become an affiliate?

How to earn money as an affiliate online?

Earing online affiliate income involves exactly the same strategies as earning any money on the Internet. There are three key processes:

• Find a product
• Drive traffic to the product
• Collect the money

Finding a product is easy. However, the choice of product is massive, so it's important to focus down onto a particular niche where you have an interest.

When you have found a niche you are happy with, select a product where the return is good, the competition for selling that product or service is not too high, and the demand is good.

Remember, just driving traffic at the product, doesn't guarantee a sale. The sales material needs to be able to convert traffic you drive towards the product, into sales.

This will be determined by the percieved benefit of the product to the customer.

People BUY what they WANT. So traffic to the product must be highly targeted to convert to sales.

Where do I find online affiliate programs?

As I mentioned previously, there are many sources.

There are many people online who are selling digital products. These usually have a long sales page, often with lots of hype, at the end of which is a BUY button which leads to a paying page. This could be through a merchant account, PAYPAL, or another paying agent.

Clickbank is one of the longest running digital product depositories and affiliate managing companies. Details for clickbank, and others are listed below with links to the sites:

• Clickbank The one everyone knows with thousands of Internet marketing type products - software, ebooks, forex etc. It's free and very simple to sign up. Once you have signed up, you can investigate the Marketplace and select any product to represent. Once you have found a product, when you click on promote your affiliate code magically arrives for you. Paste that into your website or email and you're in action.
• Commission Junction One of the best known
• Plimus - Represent a large number of products and clients: software, financials, games & video
• Cupid plc - run a large number of dating sites and offer affiliate programs for most of them. They convert very well.
• Affiliates Directory - claims to be one  the Net's original Affiliate Programs Directories, where we list 8947 Pay Per Sale, Pay Per Click and Pay Per Lead Affiliate Programs that offer Two Tier and Lifelong Commissions. We also offer an extensive range of resources and marketing tools for affiliates.
• Doba.com - drop shipping mainly, but affiliate program too (products only available for USA & Canada). Perfect for selling on eBay.
• Offer Vault - allows you to find which network has the best offer, the best payout, for any product in any niche. An extremely useful site. They also run free webinars for affiliate marketing. It's free to register.
• CBEngine - an essential research tool - Affiliate marketing professionals use CBEngine to research the top ClickBank Marketplace products to promote.
• Buy.at -  is a leading global affiliate network that drives growth for over 300 of the world’s leading brands. Some big names here like 3 mobile, AOL broadband, AVIVA Insurance, T Mobile, Betnow and many others with varying commission payouts.
• MaxBounty - a good site for CPA offers ranging from about $1 a lead to $35 a lead with lots of promotions only requiring 1 field of information to be submitted.
• Join Shareasale, Earn Cash! - affiliate management company that is very smug about its status - yuk! - but has some great products for you to promote with a mixture of income types (pay per lead & commission on sale etc) and lots of good tools to help you.

For more affiliate programs see the Affiliate Network list.

How do I promote Affiliate Programs

Things have changed quite a bit because there is much more competition on the Internet now - but that said, there are more Internet users too. People use the Internet because they are generally looking, either for information, or to buy something. Generally, people want a combination of the two - information first, and then to buy.

If you want to be successful, you need to provide the information that people are looking for to help them do whatever it is they want to do. And then, if they like what it is you are telling or showing them, they might buy it from you.

The point is, that you do not want to be a salesman because, generally, people distrust salesmen. But if you are providing information that someone can use to make a decision without pressure, then they may stay around long enough, or return to you, to make the purchase.

I have been talking as if you need to website. Well, the obvious answer is yes, it makes sense to have a website, but it's not the only way to sell something. But a website allows you to create a brand which a person recognizes and returns to in the future.

But there are also extremely effective ways to make a sustantial Affiliate Income online through:

• Lists - 'the money's in the list'
• Webinars
• Videos - eg YouTube
• Advertising - eg Google ads and Pay Per Click
• Social Media - eg Facebook
• Article marketing

The one thing you cannot do without is Traffic.

If you have ever been to a seminar or Internet Training event such as the World Internet Summit, you will be familiar with the emphasis on Traffic, and some of the other topics in the list. Traffic generation is an art in itself.

Unlike a shop, which has a street presence, it is possible to attract people who people walk past with a window display of some kind, or a sign outside. A website is very different and you have to use very particular strategies to draw people in.

You may have a website that is beautifully laid out and has lots of exciting affiliate offers on it, just perfect in every way, but if you are not getting any visitors to your site, you don't have a business.

The money is in the Traffic.

Everyone will tell you it's essential to make a list. When you have a list, you can create your own traffic. And the successful affiliate marketers earn huge amounts of money because of their list.

When you have a list, you can send regular emails to your list. Your emails will contain a balance of free information relevant to the list members, and recommendations for products or services (also relevant to the list). People consider that each person on your list can bring you an income. If you write good emails, and don't flood your list with information and offers they are not interested in, you can expect to earn a substantial income from them.

Affiliate Marketing is all about Traffic and ... Conversions

Affiliate Marketing is a very simple recipe. The principle is not really any different from having a shop on the high street where you put the goods in the shop window, and because you are on the high street you get huge amounts of passing traffic who see your goods, and are attracted to them. They come in, and they buy. The big difference is, that you are not on the high street and you have to find that traffic. Your only requirement is to drive traffic to the products you are promoting. But the recipe is very simple: TRAFFIC + COVERSIONS = INCOME.

The only thing you need to do, as an Affiliate Marketer, is to deliver the traffic.

You are in a much better position than a shop owner, because you don't need to keep any stock. You also don't need to pay for any of the products you promote, whereas a shop owner may have to pay for their stock, before they sell it.