What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the process of an affiliate marketer promoting an established company's products or services. The affiliate business model allows the two to work together without the typical restrictions of an employee/employer relationship.

Often times a business or an establishment will develop an affiliate based program that offers it's customers the ability to make a few buck by referring their friends or family. The business or company offering the affiliate program will provide a system to track sales and commissions. Often times using a custom link or URL to keep track of all the sales and who gets credit.

The most common affiliate program is Amazon, the online retail giant. Amazon has a very detailed and supportive associates system. They have steered away from the term affiliate in favor of associates. A Google search will pull up Amazon's affiliate page that links to each of their programs and marketing resources. Amazon offers multiple associates programs for industrial based marketing as well as local consumer based marketing. See the Amazon affiliates/associates page to learn more.

The affiliate marketing business model is pretty common and most companies or businesses offer some sort of membership and or rewards program. These programs are typically offline, and derive from the same type of affiliate business plan.

Although there are several third part companies that will charge set up fees to create an affiliate business for you, the majority will not work! Caution yourself when paying someone to create any sort of online business, especially an online business! Amazon is not fond of the companies that call and mis-represent themselves as actual partners of amazon.

Remember that most affiliate systems were created to give back for spreading the word about a businesses products or services. The affiliate business model is attractive for business' that are spending hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars on marketing each year. Creating an affiliate based program will likely increase the companies revenue and profits without hiring new employees or taking on new overhead. Offering the customer a reward also brings a sort of loyalty.

The affiliate marketing business model is a big reason why amazon can sell millions of products in a day. When you connect consumers with their favorite products while allowing them to make some money off of it might be the best marketing plan ever imagined!

As a marketer remember that it is an affiliate program before it's a job or a business. In order to create an income or a living off of affiliate marketing you will have to be one of the best! Creating a blog or website that gets thousands of REAL VISITORS a day is not easy! It's more likely that you will make a few bucks here and there, and that's what most affiliate programs are created for.