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What's it like to be an AFFILIATE?

If you have a website, or you are thinking about setting up your own website, you might be interested to know that there are companies who are willing to pay you commissions if you bring business to their sites.

Real AFFILIATE MARKETING is based on sales, so it isn't a matter of having a lot of banner impressions or arbitrary clickthroughs, but actual sales. The more visitors your site gets, the more sales it's likely to bring to companies who you are helping to advertise.

To get involved in this, here are some useful pages to read at this site:

* How to get your own website (yes, that's the free version, but I think it's best to get a domain and a hosting and is worth paying slightly more for).

* Affiliate marketing companies for you to join.

Patience is of the essence! Having affiliate programs at your website is not a get rich quick scheme. But after a while it will most likely start to make some money. Best to wait a few months before expecting it to make any money, but after that, it's likely to increase. I have made quite a lot of money!

How to add affiliate links to your site:

1. Join affiliate marketing companies.

2. Join affiliate programs.

3. When you are "approved" (yes, they sometimes keep you waiting), get the special AFFILIATE CODE which is unique to your site and to the merchant.

4. Transplant the special code into the HTML source code of your website (in some appropriate context-relevant places).

5. Publish.

6. Wait with patience and eventually you might get some sales.

7. Pay the cheques which arrive into the bank.

Being an affiliate is a curious thing to be, as you work for nothing on your website, but then your website works for you 168 hours per week, and after a while your accumulated efforts start to have an effect and you start to make money.

Affiliates have a culture of being mutually helpful to each other. There's plenty of "market" out there, so no ideas of being fiercely in competition. But remember that affiliate marketing companies often have quite severe rivalry with each other. It's best if you can have good diplomatic relations with most of them, even if they don't really get on well with each other.

When being an affiliate, please do not cheat, as it brings the game into disrepute. Merchants can sometimes get upset if you send spam or otherwise damage the market.

Always read the smallprint in the contracts. If you don't like what you see, or you don't agree with what you're being asked to sign, DON'T SIGN IT!

Affiliates should never be expected to pay to join an affiliate program.

Try to avoid MLM (multi level marketing) and other schemes which have no basis in proper business (eg. pyramid schemes). Good business has satisfied customers who are happy to pay for quality service and quality products. The companies who supply them are happy to pay modest commissions for legitimate sales.

Some companies have second tier commission which means you can help other affiliates without it costing you anything. If you like that, then sign up to the link at the bottom of the page (where it says "webmasters make $$$") on the page AllPosters. Also, some affiliate marketing companies are quite good on the second tier business, examples including Affiliate Future

You, as an affiliate, have a free choice to sign up to many different places at the same time, and you can have a wide spread portfolio of merchants. You choose what you'd like to promote, and you can avoid things you don't like. So, however idealistic your philosophy, you'll probably find something you like and are willing to promote. There's something for everyone's taste in the world of affiliate marketing. You make the choice of what you promote. This is quite in contrast to the "inventory" splat advertising market where your site arbitrarily promotes whoever is being shovelled into the bandwidth at the time. I've found the pay is also better in the affiliate market. Some splat pop-up places were offering thirty cents per thousand silly pop-ups at the time I was making over a dollar per unique visit to my front page. The reason for this is because customers also like to have a free choice! What a surprise! ;-)

So, go on then, Get your own website and Join some affiliate marketing companies