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Affiliate marketing is all about leveraging the existing traffic to your Web site. With a little effort in setting up links on your site, you can sit back and earn commissions on sales that you don't have to process, package and ship!
What is affiliate marketing? The dictionary defines "affiliate" (the verb) as "to bring or receive into close connection as a member or branch." Here's my version of the term as it's used in ecommerce: to establish a relationship with other merchants to sell your products, giving them a percentage of the sale.
Affiliate programs essentially work two ways. You can recruit affiliates to sell your products for a commission, thus increasing your "virtual sales force." Or you can sign up to be an affiliate for other peoples' products, linking to them and becoming part of their virtual sales force. Many people do both. The idea is that both parties make more money than they would have otherwise.
The whole concept of affiliate programs started with Amazon.com in 1996, when they realized the value of having the legions of Web sites out there referring buyers or potential buyers to their products. Amazon currently has over 900,000 "associates" (as they are now calling them). As of April 2003, they are offering associates 5% of the sale price of retail items and 15% of the sale of individually linked books listed in their catalog.
While affiliate/associates programs have been lucrative for many online merchants, including Amazon, the field is getting so crowded that it's becoming confusing to know what works and what doesn't. Beginning with today's issue, we'll take a close look at the real deal behind affiliate programs in MyEZsale's feature called "Affiliate Program Close-Up."
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