Selling Other People’s Stuff is one of the quickest and easiest ways of monetizing your website, a method that is quite effective and profitable. This type of monetization is commonly known as Affiliate Marketing, a business that is totally based on marketing other’s products and services.

In a nutshell, you will get paid if you refer visitors and targeted prospects to the merchant’s website that ends up with a sign up or sale. The customer would be happy because of finding the right product, the merchant would be pleased due to making a sale and you would be compensated for making these two parties satisfied. That’s how Affiliate Marketing Works.

While Affiliate Marketing is a very comprehensive topic and takes a lot of efforts to learn and master, it is doable. However, teaching Affiliate Marketing is not something directly related to the topic of this blog and providing a step-by-step blueprint would be out of the scope of this tutorial website.

On top of that, why would I want to reinvent the wheel, while it is already created for you?! Suffice to say, I am just going to point out some of the basic facts about Affiliate Marketing and then I will leave the rest up to the experts who know how it works such as the following guide:

The Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner

Basics Of Affiliate Marketing

1. Affiliates are normally referred as people who market other’s products and services while Merchants are companies that own the products and services.

2. There are 2 common types of compensation, revenue-sharing or payment model within Affiliate Marketing industry each of which acts as an agreement between the affiliates and merchants.

• Pay Per Lead that is based on generating qualified Leads (Sign Ups)
• Pay Per Sale that is based on generating completed Sales (Purchases)

3. In this industry, Affiliates are known as other terms such as Partners, Publishers, Referrers, Marketers and Promoters. On other side, Merchants are also called Companies, Advertisers, Sellers and Retailers.

4. To become an Affiliate for a particular Merchant, you need to sign up for its Affiliate Program. Some companies have their own in-house Affiliate Programs that you need to sign up whereas many others are enrolled into Affiliate Networks where you need to join once and then apply for each Merchant.

5. Some Merchants offer a Second-Tier or Multi-Tier program based on paying commissions into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-affiliates. In other words, you will be paid, even if your sub-affiliate refers a lead or customer. In this case, you will have a Leveraged Income. However, this type of program exists in the minority of affiliate programs and is not as common as One-Tier Affiliate Program.

6. In most cases, many merchants offer one-time payments of commission. Yet, there are other companies offering recurring commissions which means you will get paid more than once. In this model, you will have a Residual Income for months and even years to come.

7. After getting approved by the network or the merchant, you will be given an exclusive and unique Affiliate or Referral Link that will be tracked for you and triggered to report your generated Leads and Sales.

The above-mentioned facts are a fraction of what we call Affiliate Marketing Principles. So far, you have learned how powerful and profitable this monetization method could be. If you educate yourself, you can become a Super Affiliate earning 5 or even 6 figures income just from your own website.

Now, I am going to name some of the most common types of Affiliate Websites that are often classified by merchants and affiliate networks and known for many affiliates and marketers. Hope it can be helpful for you, too.

Types of Affiliate Websites

The following types of websites are just based on what we have seen on the Internet as sources for generating affiliate commissions. However, this list is not a comprehensive list and more types can be added all the time.

1. Product Review Websites:

These are content and niche market websites that review and rate the existing products and services in particular markets and industries and refer their visitors through their affiliate links.

2. Blogs and Blogging Networks:

These websites are commonly maintained by posting news and articles about specific topics and subjects in reverse-chronological order and suggesting affiliate products. Sometimes, the affiliate links are only placed on Blogs as Sponsor Ads and Banners, nothing more.

3. Personal Websites:

These web pages were so well-known before, but now their popularity has been reduced due to irrelevancy. However, many celebrities and famous people can still monetize their Personal Websites with affiliate products.

4. Coupon and Rebate Websites:

These are resources where people can find and redeem coupons and discounts for specific merchants and companies. The bottom line is huge affiliate commissions.

5. Comparison Shopping Websites:

These websites and networks enable the users to compare two or more products and services and read the cons and pros. Then, the interested visitors have the opportunity to visit the merchant official website for more information through the affiliate´s referral link and guess what?! As soon as they buy something or register, the affiliate gets paid.

6. PPC Landing Pages:

These web pages are specifically designed for Pay Per click Advertising particularly from Search Engines and will refer the visitor directly to the merchant website. If the visitor who comes after a query search finds relative content on these landing pages, he/she will take the desired action which is visiting the merchant website and purchasing the searched product. Here, relevancy is the secret key to success.

7. E-Mail Opt-In Pages:

These web pages are especially created for taking the name and e-mail address of targeted visitors and sending them relevant messages containing affiliate recommendations. Once you make people opt-in and subscribe to your mailing list, you will have the opportunity to contact them forever. That way, you can make money from one single subscriber over and over again. That´s why, this model is very profitable.

8. Loyalty Websites:

Although these types of websites don´t work for all of existing products and services, they can bring a lot of affiliate commissions by providing a reward system for purchases via points back, cash back or charitable donations.

9. Co-Registration Websites:

These types of websites act as a registration path where people have the chance to be exposed by merchant offers during the time they register for the main website. So, not only the main website gets registered users which can contact them later for promotional purposes, but also it has the chance to refer some of those users to a merchant website through an affiliate link and earn good commissions.

10. CPA Networks:

These websites are huge networks combined of two parts: Affiliates and Merchants. They expose Merchant’s offers to a large network of Affiliates which they will in turn promote the offers through their ways and methods. Since the payment model is based on the top-tier affiliates activities, CPA Networks are big money makers because of providing a lot of promoters for merchant offers. In fact, their payment model is commonly known as Cost Per Action or CPA.

Affiliate Marketing models and methods do not end here. There are literally tons of tips and tricks in this kind of monetization method and a lot of trained super affiliates earning extra-ordinary full-time income just by Selling Other People’s Stuff.

Become a Successful Affiliate By Using This #1 Affiliate Marketing Training Portal!

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To Your Success!

Hooshmand Moslemi