The 3 Basics of Affiliate marketing- A step by step guide for beginners

Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing whereby one person (the affiliate) sells or rather promotes products of another person for commissions. In most cases the affiliates earns a sudden percentage of the total price of the product he or she is promoting when people make purchases through the links or banners on their websites.
Affiliate marketing is so far one of the stress free ways to earn cash online. Once you have established your prowess and build a marketable name for yourself, then affiliate marketing should be something to go for.
Affiliate marketing does not necessarily have to be online oriented; it can be offline  through word of mouth, or even in hard copy or any other means as long as you are promoting your client's products and getting your commissions.
Before we dig any further, let us first look at how advantageous affiliate marketing is, as compared to other forms of online and offline marketing.

The advantages of affiliate marketing include:

• You do not have to create your own products
• You have no liability whatsoever over the functionality of the products
• All the hard work like shipping and dealing with customers inquiries is non of your business
• You can do it anywhere on the planet, especially when you are doing online affiliate marketing
• Setting up an affiliate website is easy as a pie and the start up cost is equally low
• The most juicy part of it is that you earn your commissions while kicking the blankets. You do not have to be personally present for people to click your links and banners, do you?

Now that you got a gist of what exactly it is to be an affiliate marketer, and from the advantages I have highlighted above, and even those I did not remember to mention ( they are too many to remember all of them), I wager you can now decide whether this is what you should be doing or you would be better off running a grocery. If you think this is where you belong, join me as I take you through the basics of affiliate marketing. And for rather obvious reasons, I will be dealing with online affiliate marketing in this post because apparently it is what many people are interested in. 

                      What you need to become an affiliate marketer

1. Your own affiliate website. Affiliate marketing becomes more interesting and most profitable when you have your own website or blog. You have total control over it and all the commissions are yours as compared to when you employ a third party like using somebody else's website or blog. Most affiliate programs will ask for the link to your website so that they can create your affiliate's unique ID that they use to identify you. Using another person's website means sharing your commissions- a bloody damn decision. 
2. Products to promote. As I highlighted earlier, you do not have to create your own products as an affiliate marketer. But you can not just sit and grin around expecting companies to come and beg you to promote their products. Look for as many profitable affiliate programs as you can find, promote products from Amazon, Flipkart  and many other online shopping platforms. A friend of mine even goes to an extend of visiting companies, supermarkets or accessory shops and convincing them as to why they should allow him to promote their products.But you also must be cautious about what you promote. Choose things that people want to buy, products that will solve their problems. Tell them why they should buy the products you are promoting, Use catchy banners that will make people want to click on them. Do not promote stuff that will simply fill your advertising space and look good around yet they are of no good. It is all about being a smart entrepreneur, a smart affiliate marketer.
3. Traffic. In  most cases, before being awarded an affiliate program you will be required to state the monthly or annual traffic to your blog or website. These are the people who will click and make purchases through your banners and links. Without traffic, your affiliate marketing will be doomed and I do not think any one of us would want to waste their time promoting things to nobody. To learn how to get more traffic to your site, look at this amazing article

There are many things you need as an affiliate marketer but these three are the most essential especially when you are starting out. Once you have these, commissions will be pouring in while you enjoy a family vacation somewhere in God knows where.
But as we will be progressing, we will be stripping the affiliate marketing monster flesh by flesh till  we reach its skeleton.That is when you might be called an established affiliate marketer.

                      See also: 5 Affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid
          
             To all the upcoming affiliate marketers