Affiliate Marketing

Welcome to IM Mate!

Affiliate marketing is basically selling other peoples stuff for commission. I could complicate it more but that's what it is.

How it works,

You sell something and part of that sale price is paid to you.

Do you need a website? No.

It is one way to affiliate market with a website but there are other ways to do it.

You'll need to pay me $7 then $17 then $47 for the rest of the info LOL
(Sorry IMer's Lame Joke.)

Split testing is making more than 1 advertisement/landing page/squeeze page etc and sending traffic to them.

A split test sends pretty equal traffic to your different pages so you can work out which version makes you more coin. It allows you to focus on the stuff that makes more money.

That's it in a nutshell.

Hope that makes sense

ODA

Also check out this thread: What are the best Traffic Sources To Make Money From Affiliate Marketing?

- Nizam

You make money with affiliate marketing by 'selling' other people's products and making a percentage of the total sale.

If you are selling other people's stuff, then you are just an affiliate who is trying to 'capitalize' from other people's creations.

Vendors are people who 'create' products (they are usually experienced online and have enough knowledge to actually create products, new marketers should refrain from making their own products until they have enough skill, knowledge and experience) and get other people to 'promote' or market them in exchange for a profit share.

How much money can you make?

1- Commission Payout Percentage: You can make anywhere between 5 to 80% commissions per sale. Some vendors do offer the ability to make 100% commissions on products sold but they are usually selling your customers some kind of 'back end' membership fee that is 'reoccurring'.

So they let you take home 100% in revenue per sale that you are entitled to make but offer some other membership deal that has monthly fees (but you do not get a percentage of this).

In truth, the 100% commission structures end up being 45 to 80% payouts in reality.

2- Value: If the products offer value and your target market can 'clearly' see it, then you can definitely make a lot more than by selling products of poor value.

3- Saturation: This is where things can get a little hectic or troublesome. Since there are so many new people who have heard of making money with affiliate marketing, there is likely a lot more people (competition) in the same market that you will have to 'share' profits with.

4- Your Skill Set: The better you are at promoting yourself and products, the better you will do. Your success takes time, effort, perseverance and ability. And that is why 97% of the people who come into this industry seem to fail.

Understand that there isn't really any failure happening here, it just seems that way.

The problem is that most new marketers who 'attempt' affiliate marketing quit way too soon because they 'expected' way too much, too fast.

The main reason that causes most people to quit too soon is a 'Mind Set' issue. You will have to 'transition' into an entrepreneurial marketer who is very savvy!

5- Mindset: Successful people think & act differently than everyone else in the same area or market. Getting the success / entrepreneurial mindset can take years (because the great majority of new people tend to put this on the back burner until too much time is wasted).

6- Your Desire Level: I would say that this is the most important aspect of becoming successful with affiliate marketing (and the work at home industry in general).

If your desire is strong enough, it will pull you through all the seeming Pain and Suffering that an entrepreneur can go through.

Why is there pain and suffering?

Because when we come into this industry very new and very 'green', we can blame ourselves too much and this goes back to lack of having the right 'mindset' (which is way more to go into detail on this thread).

Anyway, there is always a 'silver lining' in every dark cloud!

If your desire is strong enough, it will pull you through all the bull shi$ and keep you 'focused' long enough to make your break through happen online (and in life).

If you figure out all the pieces in this [make money] puzzle, you will not only succeed my friend but you will be able to 'write' your own ticket (paycheck) for life!

And everyone of you reading this right now can do it just as long as you don't do one thing...

Quit.

Not true at all. This kind of mis-information is a big part of the reason so many lose everything they invest.

It's not for everyone...or even more then a small minority.

If you are going to sell affiliate programs make sure that you create your own website on your own domain name and then add anywhere between 5-15 different affiliate offers there.

Also make sure to build a list.

Typically, split testing allows you to test a theory before implementing it for your entire email subscription list. This method allows you to measure your success. You can use split testing on any idea or on any page to see if it holds value. For instance, you might wonder if it's better to include an affiliate link directly in the email or better to send your list to a page on your site that reviews the product. So you would send an affiliate link to half your list and the other half would get the link to your website review page. Then you would see which method results in more sales of that specific affiliate product. That's just one way in which split testing can be used.

Actually You can do affiliate marketing without having a blog or website. But However if you have a blog or site than it would be an extra advantage for you to promote stuffs easily and efficiently.

As others have said a website can be a great way to get into affiliate marketing. However, I also want to point out that an email list can be a great source of traffic for your affiliate offers as well. So a website is not only one place to post your affiliate offers but it can be used as a lead generation tool to build a mailing list. Which can then be monetized by sending affiliate offers.

Another way to promote affiliate offers is with resource guides. Make a list of tools or products that you use and happily endorse. Add that page to your website or even create a PDF version of it.

There are a number of ways to do affiliate marketing. Start slow and slowly expand your promotion tactics when you master one way. Then find which way works best for you and stick to it.

Build yourself an email list. It's an marketers biggest asset.

Affiliate marketing success or failure depends on you. You are perhaps a little more on you own compared with MLM where supposedly you have an up line to support and help you. You will find that you have to use similar marketing techniques and tools, build lists, create content, write blog posts, create videos and Ebooks.

You will need to learn your trade from books, videos and forums such as this or find a mentor to guide you. You need to be a good communicator and have an interest in marketing and sales, because that is what is going to be taking up most of your time.

Certainly the higher commissions in Affiliate marketing are an attraction but you need to put in time and effort to achieve them. There is a high failure rate in all online business because most people don't like having to work to earn money. If you fail at affiliate marketing you have no one to blame but yourself.

To build a successful business you need to be passionate, enthusiastic and willing to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes. How many people here are still sticking with their New Year resolution because those are the kind of people who will succeed in affiliate marketing.

I think Rory provided a good answer to your question and I have touched on the realistic side.

Do a search on google or this forum exactly for those terms, you'll get all the info you desire, and more.....

It will also be your first lesson in learning search engine for marketing.

Sometimes you can sell things that are free and make money in an affiliate program. I have something like that coming up.

Many affiliate programs don't require you to have a website and just give you a dedicated unique link their particular program.

You get paid when you generate traffic to the link they gave you and your produce a sale.

Split testing allows you to optimize your sales but is not necessary to get sales. Split testing is simply the process of having traffic being sent to Landing page A and then later comparing the same traffic to Landing page B

Affiliate marketing is selling other peoples products online, and earning a commission for it. [I]You could compare it to putting ads on your site, but instead you choose the product you want to advertise, and get paid a commission on sale.

Split Testing is a distraction at the beginning.

Don't focus on it.

Affiliate Marketing works!

So many awesome bits of advice

Sorry for not answering your question correctly..

No, you don't need your own website, all you need is a..

Optin page, thats's it!

One of those pages, with a email submit box..

You can create a optin page for free using services like
InstaPage

Traffic > Your Optin Page (Building Your List) > Affiliate Offers On Thank you page plus in email followups. (You get 50 - 80% commissions

Hope this helps you g

Affiliate marketing is a great way for beginner's and veterans alike to start earn money online.

What affiliate marketing basically is, is you choose a product you want to promote, it gives you you're own unique link that when clicked by anyone, will take them to the sales page of your product; you will get a commission for each sale that is coming from your link.

Its not necessary to have a website to start affiliate marketing, but it is highly recommended as you can build your list of email subscribers from your website, so you can continually promote your affiliate products to your subscribers.

One of the best market places for affiliate products is Clickbank .

To those on the outside, affiliate marketing can seem like a black box. It’s inner workings are mysterious to most marketers and in many companies it’s not treated with the same seriousness as other channels. Some marketers, only familiar with the bad reputation acquired by some industry players in the 2000s, deride it as a source of spam and little more.

The truth is much more complicated. It’s true that affiliate programs can be sources of phantom revenue and off-brand promotion. But managed properly, they can also make up 10-20% of online revenue and have an ROI among the highest of any online channel. CMOs are realizing that affiliate marketing can be an important part of their arsenal and are integrating the channel into their overall marketing strategies.

Simply put, affiliate marketing is promoting the product or service of a person and receive a share in the revenue. This same concept is also applied offline.

You don't need a website to be involved in affiliate marketing, although it can be helpful. The goal will be to send people to the product or service page through your affiliate link, and if you don't use a website for that, this is called 'direct linking'.

Split testing is when you change a 'variable' in your promotion method in order to test the result and see which variation will be more profitable. Variables can be the content on your website (articles, videos, long/short posts...), the type of website you use (a simple squeeze page, a blog post...), the ad network you use (Bing ads, Adwords), which in itself include several other variables (genders, age rage, countries, mobile users...).

Hope that helps!