So, what is an affiliate and what does he or she do?

The affiliate marketer acts as a "middle man" between merchant and consumer, but without adding anything to the consumer's cost. Affiliates do not mark up or resell products. Instead, the affiliate educates and directs the consumer to a product, and they receive a percentage of the sale in commission from the merchant. The affiliate acts as an independent lead generator for the merchant by bringing in new customers.

This is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant. The affiliate can reap a full-time income marketing a whole suite of products that he does not own. They don't pay for product creation, don't have to ship anything and don't deal with customer service issues or returns. The merchant benefits from the influx of new customers, the boatloads of cheap traffic and low cost advertising. Merchants get their product and their brand in front of thousands of potential buyers without paying a dime until someone makes a purchase. It is truly a pay for performance arrangement. It's also one of the toughest types of business to earn a significant income from. Competition is fierce and almost 95% of affiliates earn little or no income.

For the lucky few, the ones that know how to do it the rewards can be amazing. This course has been created to help you become one of the few and to perform at the very highest levels of Affiliate Marketing . . .

CHOOSING AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM

Before you begin your venture into affiliate marketing, it is necessary to choose the right program for you. There are almost as many programs out there as there are products! When you first start out, it's easy to go overboard signing up to as many programs as possible, but this isn't the right way to go about it.

First, you need to decide on a area of particular interest to you. What products do you know the most about and think you could do the best job of promoting?

Once you identify your specialty, you begin by sorting through the available merchants and examine the structure of their affiliate programs.

Key areas to investigate:

1. When and how do you get paid?
Find out whether the program pays you weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, etc. Most programs have a minimum payout amount, meaning that you don't receive your commissions until hitting a minimum number of sales for the pay period. You'll also want to find out whether the programs pays you via cheque, direct deposit, PayPal or any combination of the three.

2. How much do you make per sale?
Remember, you'll be investing your own money into advertising and other expenses to promote these programs. Therefore, you should seek programs which reward their affiliates well. Many of the most popular affiliate programs out there pay their affiliates less than 10 percent commission, and therefore it is only the top 5 percent of their affiliates that are generating any serious income from these programs.

3. Is the program managed well? Is this a reputable company?
Larger companies usually have "affiliate managers" devoted to maintaining contact with their affiliates. Even if you go with a smaller outfit, they should at least offer clear contact information. You might want to try e-mailing them at their contact address to see how fast they respond to you. Mis-managed programs are, at best, a sign of disorganization and, at worst, could indicate a company in trouble. The last thing you want is to be sitting on hundreds of dollars worth of hard earned commissions and see the merchant go out of business before paying you.

Mark Styranka is the owner of Exciting Destiny.com. He writes on a variety of topics but primarily relating to money making secrets for the stay at home business. To learn more about how you can work & stay at home, Mark recommends that you visit:
http://www.ExcitingDestiny.com
http://www.AudioEbookSelfhelp.com

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