Affiliate Marketing in Plain English

It always surprises me how little the average person understands about the world of [tag-tec]affiliate marketing[/tag-tec]. Whenever I try to explain how I make money online everyone in the room gets a kind of glazed look over their eyes…its like they understand the language I’m speaking but I’m just not making any sense.

I guess its because people like you and me are ahead of the game when it comes to the future of business. We’re already working on building a presence online whereas most people can barely check their own email.

Or maybe you’re new to internet marketing and don’t fully understand how affiliate marketing works?

Whatever the case, I’m going to explain the concept of affiliate marketing in plain English so everyone can understand.

Let’s say you want to make a purchase online…perhaps a new video game. Traditionally you would see the transaction like this…

A consumer such as yourself goes to a merchant website and buys the product they need. For example, if you want to buy a Shrek video game for Xbox you’d go to Amazon, search for Shrek video games and purchase the one you want.

That’s the way most people see online transactions. But often there’s another party involved. A mostly invisible party that few people know exists. The affiliate.

An affiliate is basically a salesman. The affiliate promotes a merchant’s products through special links. When someone like you or me clicks on one of those links and makes a purchase the affiliate gets paid a commission. Pretty simple huh? Here’s what it looks like visually…

Staying with our video game example…let’s say you weren’t sure which game to buy so you ran a search for the most popular games. The website listing the top selling games may be using affiliate links so when you clicked on a link and bought a game he would have gotten paid.

The process is seamless from your point of view. You paid the same price whether it was through an affiliate link or directly through the merchant. The affiliate merely received a cut of Amazon’s profits.

Affiliate marketing is a huge business and there’s a lot of money to be made…so if you’re looking for ways to make money online I strongly suggest you consider becoming an affiliate.

I’m going to be writing a whole series of articles on affiliate marketing so be sure to subscribe to my free RSS feed so you don’t miss a thing.