This post is about the second topic of "Ways to Make Money Online". Once this is a very used way of earning money online, I´ll try to explain in few words the general concept of Affiliate Marketing.
Affiliate Marketing has been described in many different ways, although this various descriptions mean the same thing. Basically, in affiliate marketing, an affiliate is compensated for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. This compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit.
Affiliate Marketing is run by affiliate networks. This affiliate networks are composed of the group affiliates and the group merchants. The merchant is any web site owner that wants to participate in performance based marketing.
The affiliate network acts as a third party between the merchant and the associated affiliates. Many times, the network provides the technology to deliver the merchant’s campaigns and offers. The affiliate network also collects commission fees from the merchant and then pays the affiliates which are part of the program. Some examples of companies that offer affiliate programs are: Amazon, and Click-bank.
In sum, affiliate programs come in many different guises but generally speaking if a company offers an affiliate program it means they will allow you to sign up as their affiliate or independent representative and market their product or service for them. The company then pays you money, usually a percentage, whenever anyone you referred subscribes the Affiliate´s services or makes a purchase.
I have a very good e-book about this this subject. It´s called "Affiliate Marketing", it has 35 articles, and is distributed by Info-Publisher.com (Private Label Rights with no Restrictions). I used some of this e-book information to write this post. If anyone´s interested, just mail me, i´ll send it as soon as i receive your request.