Affiliate Marketing - What Exactly is Affiliate Marketing?

If you are a beginner in the online industry then affiliate marketing is something you really ought to learn about. So what is affiliate marketing? Well, affiliate marketing is just promoting someone else's products and they pay you commissions when people purchase through you. It is an incredibly straightforward process really. The merchant, or the person with the product, gives the affiliate, the person promoting it, an affiliate link. This link is unique to the affiliate, with some kind of affiliate id in the URL. When people click on that URL, a cookie is stored on their computer. And for those of you who don't know much about computers, this type of cookie is not tasty, in fact it is not even a material thing, so you can't eat it, and if you did then you wouldn't get your commissions. Anyways, what the cookie does, is when the person clicks on your link and then buys a product from the merchant, then the cookie tells the merchant that you referred that costumer, and thus you get commissions.

Cookies can last for different amount of times, depending on the merchant. Some are lifetime cookies, which means that the costumer could go buy the product a few years from now and you would still get the commissions, whereas I have heard of 30 second cookies. I believe that these have become obsolete because people discontinued promoting the products, but there are still cookies that only endure for a day or two. This means the costumer has to buy within that time limit, a day or two, in order for you to get paid commissions.

So in order to be an affiliate marketer, all you have to do is select a merchant you would like to work for, get the link from the merchant and promote the product using that link and have people buy through that link and you get paid. Often merchants will supply resources and tools such as articles, blog reviews, keywords, banners, press releases, and example pay per click ads to help you promote their products. But be cautious, because other affiliates will be promoting the same products, so with the things like the blog reviews and press releases and pay per click ads you want to make sure that you just use that as a recommendation and you do not copy it exactly because other affiliates will be using the same things and you can be penalized for duplicate content. Not to mention if all the other affiliates are using those promotions it will not be very effective at all. I mean, would you be inclined to buy a product if all you saw were a bunch of identical reviews that everyone else had? I doubt it.

So, now you know what affiliate marketing is, the question is, can you do it? If you can learn how to promote a product, then yes it is very possible. In fact, you don't even need a high school education to be able to do affiliate marketing (although it can help you be more successful faster). Truly, it is not all that difficult. You do not need to create your own product, you do not even require a website (but without one you are leaving money on the table). All you need is someone to show you how to promote a product and you can be very successful at affiliate marketing.