1. A Brief Overview of Online Affiliate Marketing

What is Online Affiliate Marketing?

Basically, online affiliate marketing is where someone advertises for another persons website and in return the advertiser receives commission for each sale their advertising brings to that website. You are considered an affiliate if youre advertising for a website that you dont own, and you are getting paid for each sale your advertising produces.

Heres an example: Lets say I want to sell computers, but I dont have a website and/or I dont have any computers to sell. Well instead of starting a company, I can just find a company online which already sells computers and offers an affiliate program. Now that I have searched and found a company, I look at what they offer. Lets say they are giving 10% commission on every sale I make. I decide to use that company and I set up my affiliate account with them and they give me a special URL (a web address that will let the company know that it was my advertising which gave them the sale), which I use in my advertisements.

Now I make an advertisement, and display it on Google. Whenever someone sees and clicks on my advertisement it will go to the companys webpage. Lets say that one hundred people click on my text advertisement and one of them buys a computer that cost $1,200. Because that person who bought the computer clicked on my advertisement the company will give me 10% of $1,200 which means that I made $120.00.

Finding Affiliate Companies

Almost every large company online has an affiliate program. There are also companies online where all they do is offer other online business a way to have an affiliate program. I call these companies Affiliate Companies.

These Affiliate Companies manage affiliate programs for thousands of online companies and websites. This means that if you have an affiliate account with an Affiliate Company (dont worry, they are completely free), you can advertise for any of the thousands of websites that use the Affiliate Company to manage their affiliate sales. If you want to, you can search Google for affiliate programs just to see how big online marketing currently is.

When you are looking at these Affiliate Companies you will notice two things. They will offer services to both Affiliates and Merchants (also called vendors). Heres the difference between the two:

Affiliate Person who promotes a website to receive commission for each product they sell.
Merchant Person or company which owns the website being promoted by the affiliates.

Here are a few of the most popular Affiliate Companies

ClickBank www.clickbank.com Having an affiliate account with ClickBank will allow you to sell digital products (only available via download) for over 10,000 online businesses. Their commission rates on average run anywhere from 10%-75% per each sale the affiliate makes on that webpage. I highly recommend starting off with ClickBank.

PayDotCom www.paydotcom.com PayDotCom is a fairly new affiliate network that is similar to ClickBank. Unlike ClickBank, PayDotCom accepts affiliates from a much broader range of countries and also pays affiliate commissions directly into each affiliates PayPal account.

Commission Junction www.cj.com Having an affiliate account with Commission Junction will allow you to sell mostly physical products (must be shipped to the buyer). A few of the big companies which use them are eBay, Dell, Best Buy and Yahoo, and many more.

Signing Up with ClickBank

Heres how to sign up for ClickBanks free affiliate program so you can start making money online with them. This will allow you to promote any website/product in their Marketplace. Once you have a ClickBank affiliate account you can advertise for several different web pages simultaneously and whenever you get a sale, your commissions will go into one account. After 16 days you will receive a check in the mail for the sales you made.

It can be difficult or confusing to find the location to sign up for ClickBanks affiliate program. Because of this I will give you the link which will take you directly to their Affiliate Signup page. It is very straightforward.

After you sign up you will have your ClickBank nickname, and you will have a password to access your account. Whenever you want to access your account and view your sales click on the Login link near the top of every ClickBank page.

Now that youve signed up with ClickBank, its time you begin learning about your advertising strategy. To do this, go to Section 2. Signing up with Google AdWords which is right after the Commission Junction section.

How to Find A Website to Promote on ClickBank

Please Note Dont read how to find a website to promote on ClickBank unless youre already reading the section about signing up with Google AdWords. Im simply putting this section here because it makes the most sense to put all of the ClickBank information in one spot rather than having it spread around throughout the guide. I will tell you when to use this section.

First off, go to www.clickbank.com. When you visit ClickBanks webpage you will notice the following screen:

To see which products ClickBank Affiliates can promote, click on the Marketplace link on the top of the ClickBank home page:

You will now see a new page which offers two things.

1. It offers a search so you can search ClickBanks marketplace for a particular product.
2. Near the bottom of the page it will show you the different categories ClickBank uses to separate merchants. Scroll to the bottom of the page to view the categories.

You will then see 9 different categories. If you click on one of those categories you will see a large list of companies which you can promote. They are organized by popularity.This doesnt mean the best web pages to promote are always on the first few pages. If you look towards the top of the page when you are in a Category, you will see a search tool which will help you to further narrow your search for finding a merchant to advertise for.

This search tool allows you to specify what type of product you want to find and possibly want to advertise. This search tool contains the following to help you to narrow your search:

Category This is where you can choose the general subject of the products you wish ClickBank to display. In the screenshot above, I am in the “Fun & Entertainment” category, so ClickBank is only displaying websites which sell products that are Fun and Entertain people.

Sub-Category This is where you can further narrow down the products ClickBank will display. Some of the Sub-Categories in the Fun & Entertainment category include: Novels, Humor, Music, Etc.

Keywords Lets you specifically search for a certain product. For example, if I wanted to search for Computer Software, I would type this into the keyword text box and then I would click “Go”.

Sort By Tells ClickBank to sort the search results in the market place. The Sort By function contains the following:

Popularity Displays the most popular products first.
High Gravity Displays the products with the most affiliates first.
Low Gravity Displays the products with the least affiliates first.
$Earned/Sale Displays the average amount of money earned by affiliates.
%Earned/Sale Displays the average commission rate earned by affiliates.
%Referred Displays the percentage of sales made by affiliates only.

When you look at the listings, you will see something that looks similar to the following picture:

1. This is the current rank of the merchants website for the category or sub category.
2. This is the title, and you can click on this to see what the webpage of this company looks like.
3. This is the description of the website so you get a general idea of what the product is without having to visit each website.
4. This is the average amount of money each affiliate earns for each sale.
5. This is the average commission each affiliate earns for each sale.
6. This means 90% of sales are produced by affiliates and 10% of sales of produced by the owner of the website (this is referring to the picture above).
7. This is the current number of affiliates promoting the product.
8. This is another link to view the merchants website.
9. This is what you click on to receive your unique Affiliate URL or Hoplink. This is the link you advertise with.

So What Happens Next?

You should already have an affiliate account setup. Now you are going to simply find a company you want to promote.

Remember to follow the rules in the section titled Finding a Website to Advertise.

Signing Up with PayDotCom

PayDotCom is very similar to ClickBank, except its newer and you get paid via PayPal. Currently ClickBank is more popular with more merchants and affiliates, but this doesnt mean you should overlook PayDotCom.

To signup with PayDotCom, go to http://www.paydotcom.com and click on the Signup link at the top of the main page.

Once you click on that link it will take you to a very easy to follow signup page where you simply enter the information it asks. Please note you need to have a PayPal account before you signup with PayDotCom. After youve signed up with PayDotCom you will be able to promote any of the products listed in their marketplace and get paid commissions on every sale you make.

Signing Up with Commission Junction

Besides ClickBank and PayDotCom, there is also Commission Junction. Commission Junction is probably the biggest affiliate network online. Some of the companies that use them are Apple, Expedia, Staples, Dell, Best Buy, etc. The main difference between Commission Junction and other affiliate networks is that Commission Junction offers mainly physical products, which means that the products are shipped to the customer rather than downloaded by the customer.

The only disadvantage with Commission Junction is that they want you to have your own website to use them. Although they require this, its not actually required as you can advertise their products just as easily on search engines.

To signup with Commission Junction go to http://www.cj.com/publishers/ and click on the link at the bottom of the page titled Apply for a Commission Junction publisher account.

You will then be taken to a page that will ask you for some basic information before completing the creation of your free affiliate account. After you complete the signup, you will have a Commission Junction account.