Affiliate marketing is basically a web-based system where you (as an affiliate) get paid for referring sales or customers to another business. This lesson will further explore the answer to: How does affiliate marketing work? There are lots of different ways of being an affiliate. Here are some fictional examples: Geoff has a website full of dog-training advice. On the side of his pages he has placed an ad for a dog-training eBook. If any of his visitors click on his ad and buy the eBook from the merchant’s website, Geoff receives 75% of the price of the book as commission for sending the visitor to the merchant. How Does Affiliate Marketing Work? An image showing a dog training affiliate site. Tara has a health supplements website, containing lots of useful information about various health supplements. By pasting a small segment of code into her website, she gets ads relevant to her content automatically showing up on her page. She earns money every time a visitor to her site clicks on one of these ads, even if they don’t end up buying from the merchant. She regularly sends out lessons and tips to her list members, and occasionally she promotes products that offer affiliate commissions. Whenever somebody from her newsletter list clicks on a link in her emails and buys one of the various products she’s promoted, she earns a percentage of the product price. Image of an affiliate marketer Affiliate marketing can be a very lucrative business. There are a huge number of affiliates earning full-time incomes from affiliate marketing, and a lot of affiliates doing considerably more than that! Check out these figures… In the next lesson we’ll show you some more examples of what’s possible with affiliate marketing, and we’ll share some stories of ordinary people with extraordinary successes. If you need assurance that any of this is possible…. stay tuned for that! But for now let’s talk about what affiliate marketing actually IS… Affiliate Marketing Is…. …Pay-for-performance: You only earn money as an affiliate if you’re producing results for the merchant or network: whether it’s sales, clicks or registrations. …A Legitimate Business:

Affiliate marketing is a legitimate business and the most successful affiliates run their affiliate businesses as just that — Businesses! …Big business! Affiliates worldwide collectively earn billions of dollars each year. One report estimated that affiliates in the UK alone earned over 2 billion dollars in 2006. Within that there are affiliates turning over millions of dollars a year, affiliates who scrape by earning $20/week, and everything in between. …A long established business model: Affiliate marketing has been around since people realized the internet could be used for commerce. One of the earliest big affiliate programs was started by Amazon.com in 1996 (although, just quietly, their commissions aren’t anything to write home about!) …Internet-based: You can promote yourself or your website using offline methods, but when it comes to earning commissions, all the tracking and processing is done through the internet. There’s no door-to-door selling here! …Open to anyone: You don’t need any special credentials to be an affiliate.

Since affiliate marketing is pay-for-performance, most affiliate programs are open to anyone: Whether you’re experienced or a complete novice. You also don’t need to be a computer genius to be a successful affiliate. Everyone goes through the same learning process. It just comes down to whether you can fight your way through to the other side! Ok, now that we’ve seen what affiliate marketing IS, here’s what affiliate marketing is NOT. Affiliate Marketing is Not… …Creating and selling your own product: Creating your own product is a different business that requires a lot more risk than affiliate marketing. When you create a product you invest money in creating the product, marketing the product, handling payments and delivery, providing customer support, and ongoing development.

An affiliate is simply responsible for sending prospects to a merchant — a much less daunting prospect! That said, product owners can learn a lot by being affiliates first, and a lot of affiliates go on to build their own products later in their careers. …Just about pornography, pharmaceuticals, online dating or gambling.

“Nothing is as simple as we hope it will be.” ~ Jim Horning

One of the biggest challenges I often face with learning about Internet Business is keeping my focus. As a newbie, I find the amount of information that is presented to me daily and the various arenas I visit to seek out new ideas can often be overwhelming. Add to this the fact that I have always been a multi-tasker. I think when you become a Mom it is a divine requirement handed down from the universe and once you learn it you tend to integrate it into everything. Why just wash dishes when you can wash dishes, cook dinner, and listen to your eight year old recite spelling words? I can hear my Mother laughing.

So when it came to learning about Internet Business I began to follow the same habit. I would read on every subject, follow every link, listen to every podcast, and absorb as much as I could on every Internet Business model out there. I was following 5,000+ people on Twitter (big mistake) and had added so many friends to my FaceBook account that the term Friend completely lost it’s meaning even in a Social Networking sense. Trust me when I say at the end of the day your head is spinning and by the time you actually sit down and attempt to go to work, you are paralyzed! Should you write a blog or an eBook? Do I start a website or learn about AdSense? Should I order this product or join a forum?

If you try to do everything at once you will successfully arrive NOWHERE FAST.

It was only of recent that I have started to understand the absolute necessity of focus in Internet Business. It is ESPECIALLY important to stay focused when you are still working full time (like me) and only have a limited amount of hours to dedicate to your Internet Business. The Internet, as we know, is still in it’s infancy and yet even now the amount of information available to us is enormous and scattered. In order to move from analysis paralysis and into action we have to find our focus. This is not to say that you should not take the time to learn and seek information. I just recommend that when you find a subject that interests you, keep your learning focused to that one item and learn it until you feel confident that you fully understand it. Then, move on to the next.

Here are some steps you can take to get and stay focused as you begin to grow your Internet Business.

Begin with the end in mind. In other words, know what it is you are trying to accomplish. This does not always have to be the BIG picture (although you should have that in mind). Just think about what you want to accomplish today and then think of three immediate actions that can do to get you there. For instance, if your end goal is to start a blog you should focus your action toward that intended target until you reach it. Some examples of immediate actions you could take for this goal might be: Sign up to WordPress, Learn the program, and set up your profile.

Write it down! This was a hard one for me because I always thought I had a mind like a steel trap and, therefore, never needed to write it down. But there are two things that happen when you start writing things down. First, something in your thinking changes when you take a thought from just hanging around in your head and actually put it on paper. I don’t know the psychology behind it, all I know is there is something in our subconscious mind that gives more importance to something once we write it down. Second, you are less likely to get distracted from your goal. If you rely on all the things floating around in your brain then you will just keep shuffling them around like a deck of cards and picking them out randomly as they come to the forefront.

Keep it simple. Don’t make your daily TTD (Things To Do) list so long that you will never complete it. Only you know your pace so keep your action items digestible. There is a great sense of accomplishment when you actually get through your TTD list but you will never accomplish this if it has everything on it. So make it manageable. You can always make a second list if you are feeling particularly productive that day. =)

Find and Use Tools to Help You Get Focused. There are some really great tools out there that can help you with time management and goal achievement. Just don’t take valuable time away from your end goal getting caught up in researching 100 tools to get yourself there. Often the basics work just as good. So think legal pad and pen to start.

Once I started to get focused I noticed I was able to accomplish much more in the limited time I had. Make a plan and stick to it. You will be moving forward with focus and your business will start to excel.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Deirdre_Baker

By Matt Bacak