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Affiliate marketing is a cottage industry that has grown very quickly in the last couple years, without many people knowing much about it. It is a true home business opportunity, and today, affiliate marketing is the single fastest growth industry on the Internet and accounts for a large portion of the Internet Market.

Affiliate networks and affiliate programs are increasingly used by merchants for affiliate marketing and product / website promotion.

There are two ways of looking at affiliate marketing.

1. You have a product and want to sell it through your own affiliate program.

2. You do not have a product and you want to promote someone else's product.

Since the basic fundamentals of Affiliate Marketing are the same in both cases, in the following sections of this article just consider your self as the Merchant for Item 1 and the Affiliate for Item 2.

The Affiliate programs, also called referral or reseller programs, are a type of marketing strategy.

It is the act of promoting your product or service through independent sales people, referred to as partners or affiliates. They will get a percentage of the sales value of the product when a sale is made. It also works in reverse by having you, as an Affiliate, do the marketing for the Merchant. The commission percentages vary from 25% to 75%, depending on the product and the Merchant.

Learning how to work the Affiliate Marketing system is extremely easy. It is the simplest business model to make money, and in fact, research shows that it is the most cost-effective way to generate online sales.

It is often said that Affiliate Marketing is a great field because the costs involved are so low.

Affiliate Marketing is a brilliant way to begin earning on the Internet for those of us who haven't as yet got our own products. The draw of affiliate marketing is that it is on a "pay per performance" basis. It is a very competitive business, but it is also one of the easiest ways to make money online.

As a beginner, joining other Merchants' affiliate programs is the easiest way to start a business on the Internet, and it is usually free. If there is a fee to join a program, be careful and do a lot more research on the program itself, as you may find it is something totally different from what you are expecting.

If you decide that affiliate marketing is your game, or you intend it to be, you must make email marketing your main promotional method. This requires the use of autoresponders for maximum return on minimal effort. To be wholly successful in Affiliate Marketing, it is necessary to have a healthy, responsive opt-in list which goes with the autoresponder. For the beginner this is the headache. Generating a responsive opt-in list does take time, but it is well worth the effort of cultivating the list so that when you recommend, they will buy.

Remember that affiliate marketing is a partnership, so make sure your partner is able to support you as you help him promote his products and services, or vice versa. Normally the Merchant will provide a wide range of promotional tools for you to use.

You can earn money from your website promoting the affiliate programs of many manufacturers and on-line suppliers. Making money by this method isn't hard work, but it's not point and click easy either.

Affiliate programs give everybody a chance to make a profit through the internet ' what is termed a WIN ' WIN situation.

Change is constant in online advertising and affiliate marketing is no exception. Email advertising is probably the most often used affiliate marketing tool. There is also search engine optimization, paid search engine advertising, classified ads, offline advertising, and many other methods.

Direct promotion via email has boomed over recent years, but has brought with it mountains of spam. This is an element that you will need to avoid as your email being read by the intended recipient is the basis of your getting sales.

It is reported that the most common Internet-based advertising is now 'Pay per Click' (PPC). It has always been thought of as an expensive method of advertising, but if you follow strict controls on your advertising campaigns, they can provide large rewards. Start small and keep a strict watch on it if you go this way.

Unlike traditional advertising, everything can be tracked back as all is transparent right down to the last penny, and it is very simple to keep track on costs and your return on investment.

If you are looking for a way to promote your home business, affiliate marketing can help. Creating multiple streams of income is an important factor when considering any type of business, and Affiliate Marketing could well be one of those streams. In fact, research shows that affiliate marketing is the most cost-effective way to generate online sales.

From the inside, affiliate marketing is in its boom phase, so if you own a web site and have basic web page design skills, are a Beginner or an Old Hand, getting started in affiliate marketing is a fairly simple process. If you are a Beginner, then this is one method of quickly getting started. Just remember that affiliate marketing is just the start ' the sky's the limit.