However, this isn’t face-to-face sales like a used car salesman, (unless you are doing video I suppose), affiliate marketing is all about pre-selling the customer and adding value to the transaction.  You see, there are plenty of companies out there with products who need those products sold, and there are plenty of people out there that want to buy those products; affiliate marketers are the middlemen in between who get the two together.  When you do this, you collect a certain percentage of the profit as your reward!

To find these interested consumers, you might set up a review site, a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign, a niche site that collects emails (opt-in), a Squidoo lens, a wordpress blog, or any number of other ways.  Once the prospective customer gets to your website/landing page, you need to let them know why the product is so great that they can’t pass it up, and give them an affiliate link to buy the product. When the customer clicks on your affiliate link, a cookie is placed on their machine.  This cookie allows the merchant to track which affiliate is responsible for bringing in that particular customer.  The prospective customer is sent to the merchant’s site and after buying the product, the affiliate is credited with the sale.  That’s how you get paid!

Of course, it all sounds simple on paper but the reality is a little tougher.  The affiliate newbie has plenty of concerns: how to get targeted traffic, finding the right niche, keyword research, tracking conversions, and many more.  Keep checking back as I will cover these and other issues in future blog posts.