Thursday, July 19, 2007

Associate Marketing: Is It the Simplest Means To Make Money Online?

Affiliate marketing has been around long before the internet, but it has become so much more popular as a way to make money since then. Let's take a quick look at what it is and what it is exactly that makes it so special, shall we?

Affiliate marketing is not about writing your own product and trying to find people to buy it. Affiliate marketing is about recommending someone else's product or products and making a percentage from that sale. It's basically piggybacking on the efforts of other peoples work, which is ok, because they want you to!

These marketers who have their own products will be very eager for you to recommend their products. If they know what they are doing then you are their best friend! And you can easily have a great, profitable business relationship with these other marketers; they create the products and you sell them!

This is really great for both the affiliate and the creator of the product. The average affiliate marketer just wants to make some extra money. They do not bother with creating products or services or even handling other tasks that come along with being a product creator or owner, like customer service, updates, upgrades, etc. Great affiliates are really good at figuring out what people want to buy and then directing those people to the product. This is one of the many wonderful advantages to being an affiliate marketer: It is not your job to sell the item. It is your job to simply pre-sell the item. Let the items sell themselves.

Affiliate marketing can be even more lucrative for the affiliate marketer by offering buyers incentives for buying through your affiliate link. What kind of special offers? Well, the smartest affiliates are affiliates that have actually tried the product or service they are promoting. When the affiliate has actually tried the product, they can create better offers based on what they know of the product! The affiliate marketer that does this can provide additional reports or even videos that explain the advantages or secrets of what the buyer can do with the product or service! If you are an affiliate marketer selling a software application, then you can tell your visitors that they will receive a video from you showing the best ways to make use of the software program.

Back to the original question: Is affiliate marketing the easiest path to make good money online? Without a doubt, yes, it is. Once you take into consideration the fact that you do not have to make a product and all that you have to do is promote products to people that are already looking for products you are promoting, taking candy from a baby could not be easier.