What is Affiliate marketing and how does it work?

How many times you hear about affiliate marketing when searching for work from home opportunities? The answer would surely be hundred to thousand times, right? So it can be a possibility that you want to start affiliate marketing but you will need a clear understanding of these affiliate programs and how they work. So here we are going to share essential information that can help you to get started with affiliate programs.

What is affiliate marketing? 

It is the most popular and probably an oldest marketing method in which you become the affiliate of companies and refer their products to other people. When those people buy those products from your reference then you get certain commission.

Nowadays a lot of online shopping portals are running affiliate programs so you have a lot more opportunities to earn more as you are not bound to certain company. This means you can join as many affiliate programs as you want.

In fact thousands of people have chosen affiliate marketing as their full time career option and are already earning hundred to thousand bucks a day.

How does online affiliate marketing works?

Let’s understand online affiliate marketing it with a scenario:

1. The online shoppers searches for the products online
2. The shopper lands on the affiliate website where a lot of products are listed
3. Now the shopper clicks on any product and gets redirected to the merchant site (actual shopping site) with the unique affiliate link
4. If he buys the product the merchant pays the affiliate his deserving commission

You can see how simple this entire process is!!

How do the merchant sites track your sales?

People who are interested in affiliate marketing they sign up for the online program and the merchant site will give a unique URL (link) that is called tracking URL.

The merchant site will use this unique tracking URL to identify the sales made through particular affiliate and this is how affiliates get paid for their referral sales.

But for making really good income from affiliate marketing and making it your career option you will need to do a lot of hard work instead of simply putting links on your social profiles.

What do you need to make Affiliate marketing a career option?

Well, you can do this work by using your social accounts like Facebook and Twitter etc. But if you really want to succeed in this work then you must have a blog and a personal domain.

People use free blogging platforms too but having a custom blog with personal domain can increase your chances to be a successful affiliate.

Top 3 reasons to start Affiliate Marketing

1. No or very low startup cost: You can start this work without spending any money or if you want to make it a career option you may want to set a blog to promote your links and you can start a blog at very low cost.
2. Be your own boss: If you are a person who wants to work on your own terms then this is definitely a good option to get started. And you can make a passive income from affiliate marketing.
3. Don’t need office space or staff: Yes, you can do it all alone by just sitting comfortably at your home!

If you are convinced with all these reasons then you must start affiliate marketing and enjoy being your own boss!!