Beginner's Guide to Affiliate Marketing

What is affiliate marketing? This is an advertising model in which companies’ partner and compensate third party sellers also referred to as affiliates to generate traffic or leads to the company’s services and products.

Who is an affiliate? This is the third-party publisher who could be the owner of multiple websites or email marketing lists.

How does it work? The affiliate searches for products and services in the market they enjoy, then promote those products or services, and earn a piece of the profit from each sale they make.

According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone while affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources across the industry.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn passive income without having to develop your own products or offer your own services to generate additional income from products that complement what you already have to offer.

Affiliates are not employed by the company whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the company’s internal sales departments.

That being said, getting started with affiliate marketing can be a bit overwhelming. So, let's look at beginner’s steps to affiliate marketing to get you started today.