How does affiliate marketing work?

How does affiliate marketing work?

Affiliate marketing allows you to recommend products and services from other companies and be paid a commission if someone buys the product as the result of your recommendation. To track which purchases happens as a result of your recommendation(s), the merchant will provide you with a special link to use when linking to their website that contains a unique referral code assigned to you. If people click that unique link, and buy the product or service within a specified timeframe (the timeframe varies depending on the merchant), you get a commission on the sale.

The products cost the consumer the same amount of money as it would if they didn't buy it through your affiliate link, but the merchant pays you a referral fee for generating the sale.

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So affiliate marketing is legitimate?

Absolutely. Affiliate marketing is a viable and legitimate way to monetize your blog or website. Tens of thousands of merchants run affiliate programs and will pay you a commission for sending them sales. However, there are some scams centered around affiliate marketing. You'll find information on how to spot affiliate scams – and avoid them

So how do you find affiliate programs to promote?

The easiest way to find affiliate programs to promote is to check if the people selling products and services you love have an affiliate program – assuming those products and services would be relevant to the visitors to your blog or website. There are also multiple ways to find new quality products or services to promote to your audience based on their interests.

Is affiliate marketing free?

Yes and no. You should never pay to become an affiliate for a merchant's program. Joining and promoting an affiliate program is a free opportunity. If someone is asking you to spend money to become their affiliate, then you're being presented with an affiliate scam and should steer clear of that program.

While joining affiliate programs is a free opportunity, it's a business – and like any business, it will cost some money to start and run it. But those costs will be associated with building, running and promoting your blog or website. There are many tools – free and paid - you can use to assist you with all of these processes.

Can you really make passive income with affiliate marketing?

Yes and no. Affiliate marketing can generate passive income, but the passive side of the income usually only follows putting in a few years of hard work to generate the brand and audience you'll need to begin generating those passive sales. I have multiple sites earning passive income, but each of those sites took a lot of front end work to build up to that point. And not every site gets to the point of passive income. Some sites require continual maintenance though the revenue they generate can also allow you to pay for that maintenance to be done vs. you needing to do it yourself.

Anyone promising to teach you how you can make thousands without putting in much work is selling you the dream and should be avoided.

Where can you learn more about how to do affiliate marketing?

I offer a ton of free resources, tips, guides and tutorials here on my blog (http://malokopro.blogspot.com/)  that can help you get started in affiliate marketing – and help you find success with it. While there are plenty of paid training programs out there, you need to be careful. Some of the people who create these programs make their money by selling the dream and not through doing true affiliate marketing for products or services outside of selling you the dream. That's not to say there are not some good training programs out there - but buyer beware.