Affiliate Marketing..

is one of the most widely practiced type of internet marketing  businesses on the internet today.  Affiliate Marketing can be defined as a cooperative effort between merchants (or those who have products to sell) and an affiliate (those whose website that is advertising the products).

In this business model, an affiliate is compensated for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts.  So as an example, if you have a banner ad for “Jim’s Widgets” on your website, and someone clicks on that ad, the owner of Jims Widgets will pay you “X” amount.  The amount that an affiliate is paid for the click depends on the product, the niche and the merchant.

There are different types or classes of affiliate marketing.  The most basic affiliate marketing programs fall under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

• Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular (and easiest) type of affiliate marketing.  With this method, the merchant pays the affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to the merchant’s site.  The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase anything from the merchant’s site.  However the typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are often very small, usually just a few cents per click.  Ads from Google Adsense are one type of Pay Per Click marketing you might be familiar with.

• Pay Per Performance (PPP)

PPP affiliate marketing is the most popular method among merchants and is also the most lucrative type for the affiliates.  In this type of affiliate program, the merchant only pays the affiliate whenever his referral translates into an action.  That is whenever the visitor he has referred actually buys something from the merchant’s site or when the visitor becomes a lead.  This could provide considerable savings for the merchant in terms of reduced staffing lower office costs .  PPP marketing is actually one of the most lucrative for the dedicated affiliate because the commissions are often in the range of 15% to 20% of the actual product sales.

Pay-per-performance affiliate marketing can be further classified into two popular types: pay-per-sales (PPS) and pay-per-lead (PPL).

• Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In the pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant’s site actually buys something from the merchant’s site.  Affiliates are typically paid on commission basis, although some merchants might opt to pay a fixed fee.  But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee that is paid to affiliates in the pay-per-click affiliate program explained above.

• Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance companies or similar businesses who must rely on leads for their company to grow.  In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant’s site fills out an application form or some other type of questionnaire related to the business of the company.  Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Certainly Affiliate Marketing is a great situation for both the marketer and the affiliate, and can be advantageous to both.  As an affiliate, you can be up and running withing a few days.

But keep in mind that if it sounds to good to be true, it generally is.  You can literally work for hours building a site, optimizing your blog posts, doing SEO work and still only get paid a few cents.  To be a successful Affiliate Marketer you must attract a large amount of traffic to your site as well as to the merchant’s offer.  Copywriting and SEO skills are required to make your site and your offers unique from the other millions of Affiliate Marketers who are following some Guru’s plan.

Since your success with Affiliate Marketing depends on traffic being converted into customers, it is a good idea to link to your website from Facebook and Twitter.

Affiliate marketing is not a “Get Rich Quick” scheme, it takes hard work, knowledge and focused effort..but it can be VERY lucrative if applied properly.