Wondering what all this affiliate marketing is about?

To put it in very simple terms an affiliate marketer will promote merchant products for a slice of the pie. The merchant offers a wide range of assistance from promotional materials, payment set up and regular training and advice. This leaves the affiliate marketer to concentrate purely on promotion.

For the newbie affiliate marketer it would be almost impossible to start to make money online without the merchant, because what is delivered to him as a ready made package is usually beyond his skills. To start up on your own would be costly, you would need to create a product, promotional material and sales copy. You would probably need to hire an expert in your field to help you develop the product, all this would possibly beyond your budget. So why not take advantage of a merchant who has done all this work for you? The training involved is usually of the highest quality and allows most people to be able to pick up the necessary skills fast. Remember there are no set hours when you are entering into the affiliate world, so learning is flexible and you can work 24/7.

The learning process involved in being an affiliate can be gone through quickly and your new skills will then enable you to earn money online quickly. The main affiliate businesses online are based on information and once your aptitude for the business has been gained the opportunities to be rewarded are endless. You will learn how to promote products online through various advertising methods and you income will be in direct proportion to your knowledge and time spent researching and promoting your chosen product or products.

The secret in learning the process is to adopt one or two internet marketing strategies and repeat them over and over again and over again until you become an expert. The internet marketing gurus first started out by learning there methods and turn to affiliate marketing to earn extra revenue. They can makes thousands of dollars by taking advantage of their mass email listings; one email can generate a whole years salary for some gurus.

Affiliate marketing is quite simply the most popular income opportunity around as it is easy to learn and results can be seen in a short amount of time. You can use your skills on multiple products and income opportunities are quite literally endless. Remember affiliate marketing is a business that will ultimately give you what you put into it and you can work when and where you want as long as you have an internet connection. It should not take you longer than 3 months to learn and apply the skills effectively enough to see a real income.

I have been working online for 5 years now and have overcome the many stumbling blocks many online marketers make. If you are seriously want to earn money online you need to visit my site Money Making Truth as it is dedicated to providing you with honest advice and resources.

One of my clients recently created a new bundle of products and wants to find other people willing to sell them on her behalf. In return, they get a hefty commission.

She asked me for some advice about how to best approach these people, and how to convince them to be part of her extended sales force.

So I’m going to share some of that advice with you here.

This is known as an affiliate program, where you pay others to send people to your business, and you pay the affiliates a commission if those people buy from you.

This has become extremely common on the Internet, but it’s been around long before the Internet as well for example, real estate agents sending business to mortgage brokers, and vice versa.

Three key principles

A successful affiliate program - on or off the Internet - rests on three important principles. If you get this mix right, you’ve got a better chance of making your affiliate program work.

Not all affiliate programs follow these rules. But if you break them, make sure you know why. Unfortunately, most businesses ignore one or more of these principles, without knowing why. And that’s a disaster for their affiliate program.

1. Good Match

First, there must be a good match between the two parties. In other words, choose affiliates who have a list of the right sort of clients.

Otherwise, you’ll waste time trying to recruit affiliates who aren’t interested in promoting you, because they know you’re not a good match for them.

Even if you do recruit them, if it’s not a good match, you’ll waste time creating useless joint venture deals, handling queries from customers who don’t understand your offering, and processing refunds from disgruntled customers who were promised something that you couldn’t deliver.

2. Commission Only

Second, money changes hands only on a successful sale.

Affiliates don’t pay you to join the program, and you don’t pay them unless they refer somebody who makes a purchase. This makes the deal a low-risk proposition, which makes it easy for both parties to accept.

There are different ways of calculating commissions, but the basic principle is that it’s always triggered on a sale. You don’t have to worry about paying your affiliates a “salary”; and they don’t have to worry about paying you a “joining fee”.

3. Win-Win

Finally - and most importantly - the single most important element of a profitable affiliate relationship is that both parties walk away thinking that they got the better end of the deal.

How can both parties get the “better end” of the deal? Well, the two parties bring different assets to the deal. You’re happy to sell your product or service to new clients and give away part of a profit that you never would have had; and the affiliate has a list of potential clients, so is happy to refer them to you in return for a share of the profit.

Do you follow these principles?

If you’ve got an affiliate program, are you following these principles? If not, I bet you’re struggling to make it work. You’ll get greater leverage by following these rules - at least until you’ve got enough experience to break them deliberately.

RanjuKumar is assistant to Gihan Perera is the author of “The Seven Fatal Mistakes That Most Web Site Owners Make - And How To Avoid Them” and “Spin: Turn One Idea Into Hundreds of Information Products and get your complimentary copies now.