What is an Affiliate Program ?

STEP 1 -- You send visitors to someone's web site (using whatever creative marketing & advertising ideas you can devise for promoting affiliate products.) You "warm up" visitors so that they arrive at the website sales site with an open-to-buy frame of mind. In other words, you "PREsell" and then the sales page literally does the "selling" of the products for you.

STEP 2 -- The website owner identifies and tracks those visitors (via a proven cookie/database-driven system) as belonging to you.

STEP 3 -- If the visitor buys a product (now or in the future), you get a commission.

STEP 4 -- (The best part) The company website owner pays you. (You don't have to try and collect money from the customer)

All you need to do is PREsell your visitors. The company looks after everything else, including...

• processing credit cards

• shipping products

• providing follow-up customer support

In 1997, Amazon.com launched the concept of affiliate programs into prominence (they weren't the first, but they were the first to do it big-time!). For the one person on the Net who doesn't know, Amazon sells books (and tons of other merchandise now) online... and only online.

Books, of course, offer information on millions of different specialized subjects. And there are millions of Web sites out there, on an incredible variety of subjects.

So Amazon figured, "Why not convert those sites into specialized, niche book shops for us? We'll pay a commission when a site refers a customer who buys a book."

And that's how Amazon started one of the first affiliate programs (AKA associate or referrer programs).

Here's how an affiliate program works, using Amazon as the example...

The affiliate provides links from his site to certain books on the Amazon site, books that are related to the affiliate's site content. Amazon uses special software that tracks who sends each visitor. If and when the visitor buys, Amazon pays the affiliate a commission.

The affiliate never has to...

* write a book * process an order * ship a book * answer customer support e-mails.

And the same applies to any product that is sold in this way... CDs, travel, domain names, even sheep!

It is one of the best opportunities for the average person interested in e-commerce. And it is a tremendous monetization model for those who publish information (whether as their primary business, or a means to attract and PREsell traffic for their primary business). But... affiliates are not immune to the standard rules of the business world. Those who work, and work well, succeed. Those who are looking to "get rich quick" are once again heading for disappointment.

P.S. The part about "sheep" is made up. But just about every other product that you could imagine is, or will soon be, sold via an affiliate program. Some affiliate programs cost money to join but many are free.

If you're looking for an affiliate program, we highly recommend SiteSell! You don't even have to have your own website to be a SiteSell affiliate and earn money. It's the best "FREE" affiliate program on net.