In simple terms, Affiliate Marketing allows website publishers to earn a commission by selling products on their sites. Affiliate Programs are extremely popular due to their simplicity and effectiveness. You can join an affiliate program, set up links and begin earning money in a matter of minutes.

Unlike advertising links that pay based on the number of clicks, affiliate websites earn money when site visitors make an actual purchase. Because of this, it is important to select the products that are the most relevant to your website and your visitors. However, affiliate marketing has a number of distinct advantages that offer a perfect work-at-home solution for Web publishers. – AffiliatePrograms.com

In basic terms affiliate marketing is becoming affiliated with another person or company and selling their product for them. After you have completed a sale for them your affiliate merchant (the company with the product) will pay you (the affiliate) a commission on each individual sale you make. – Nick Quinlan

With those definitions, I’ll broaden it so beginners like me would understand it in “newbie’s” terms. Not that the above can’t be digested by newbies, but I would elaborate it as I understood it. As you can see, I have quoted the definitions I have found, because I feel that a “professional” would surely know what they are talking about…

Affiliate Marketing is selling products of a company or an individual. Let’s say, you have a website which tackles about “making money online”. Then, your products should be related to your site. You simply can’t promote a product about gardening or pets.

To be more familiar with how Affiliate Marketing works, I need to point out a few things :

• A Merchant is the one who has the products. They can opt to sell their products directly to the public and get their profits 100% or have affiliates sell it for them.
• An Affiliate is the one promoting the products and in turn receives a commission when someone buys it.

For beginners, you don’t have to pay anything in order to promote products and eventually earn. All you need is your computer and of course internet connection. If you don’t know how to make or set up a website, it’s fine, because there are free services that can help or guide you in getting one. Blogger, for example, was a great help when I was just starting to blog.

If you really don’t know how or some would say “they are not techie”‘, even with all those help and FAQs all over the web on how to create a website of your own, there are still some other ways in which you can promote your products. This topic will be discussed in my next posts. By the way, even a total non-techie person would be able to learn basic html. That is if they are willing to learn.

As for products to sell, there are literally thousands of them. You just need to find some good ones which could earn you big money. There are things which a newbie should know before signing up to promote a product. It will be discussed also in my upcoming posts.

So, to wrap this up. Affiliate Marketing can provide you with a decent income but you have to be consistent. You can’t just place a banner or links on your site and just leave it there, most of the time, unnoticed. You need to promote it not just once but many times and whichever legal ways you can think of. Focus on a few great products first and constantly promote your urls. Who knows, soon enough you will leave your traditional job because you are earning much more as an affiliate.