Affiliate Marketing 101

I talked about how I got my start in affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing?

Essentially, you are pushing, pitching, selling someone else's product. But you don't deal with the customers. You don't deal with shipping and handling. You don't deal with any of that. All you do is refer the customers to them, and if they buy the product or whatever they sell on their website, you get a cut of the sale! Some important skills you should hone to blast the competition away as an affiliate include copywriting and persuasion. This gets much more important if you are shamelessly plugging someone's product. Fortunately there are ways to not be so "in your face" and gently lead a potential customer to their website.

What kind of affiliate programs are there? How do you sign up? It's easy. There is affiliate program for almost any product or service out there that is advertised on the internet. Here are four big sites where you can promote a whole smörgåsbord of products. All affiliate programs are free to sign up for, since you are essentially being "hired" to sell their products.

Amazon.com's Associate Program
If you sign up for this program, you will have access to promoting every single product on Amazon! Because these are all physical products, your cut will be lower (generally below 20%, often below 10% per sale), so I would focus on selling more expensive items, especially if you are using paid advertising.

Commission Junction
This is probably the best place to go to promote physical items and services. Many large companies host their affiliate program here. From airline tickets to insurance companies, CJ.com has it all. It's trusted and will definitely be around for a long time.

ClickBank
This is the mother of all affiliate program sites. There are literally thousands of affiliate programs here, and it's incredibly easy to sign up for them. These products are all or mostly digital products, meaning there is no "real" manufacturing, shipping, and handling costs. This means you get a much bigger piece of the action. Most products give you a 50% share or higher on every sale. If you develop your own product, you can set up your own affiliate program and get people to refer potential customers to you.

Paydotcom
This is a new, up and coming affiliate program site. It's a lot like ClickBank, but hosts a number of different affiliate programs. Highly recommended.

There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. Visit most sites and you will find one (look for "affiliate" or "webmasters" somewhere on the site).