Making money using Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate eCommerce Store Marketing is the art of selling someone elses products using a website you design and maintain. You become an affiliate by going to a company that has an affiliate program, signing up with them, and then placing their products in a store you control and getting people to come to your store.

From the customer's perspective, they are shopping at your store, but they are actually purchasing from the company to which you are affilated. The company then pays you a percentage of the product price. Two of the best affiliate programs are Amazon and eBay. When a potential customer sees "Powered by Amazon" or "Powered by eBay" it instills confidence in your product. They also know that the actual sale and shipping will be handled by a company they trust.

Of course, affiliate stores can sell one company's products or the products of hundreds of companies. However, the more companies you affiliate with the more difficult it becomes to track your earnings. This is where the affiliate networks come into play.

There are two types of affiliate approaches:

• Develop an affiliate ecommerce store to sell affilate products.
• Use pay-per-click, such as Google Adwords, to sell affiliate products.

With a store of your own, you can advertise products that match the type of content you have. With pay-per-click advertising, you don't need a site. You pay when someone clicks on your ads on a site where Google has displayed them. The link takes them to the site you're promoting. Because you used your unique code in the link, you receive credit for the click and if they make a purchase within the alotted time frame (usually 30 to 60 days), you receive payment.

There are two affiliate networks that control most of the market. They are Commission Junction and Clickbank. The affiliate networks aggregate your earnings from a multitute of affiliate programs they provide and you don't have to keep track of the commissions. They do it for you and pay you when you reach an agreed upon dollar amount.