Affiliate Marketing is the process of marketing someone else’s products or services for a commission of each sale that you make. So, essentially, Affiliate Marketers are Commission Salespeople and many Affiliate Marketers earn a very good income selling other people’s products and services. One definite advantage that the Affiliate Marketer has over the general Commission Salesperson is that the Affiliate Marketer can sell the products or services of any number of companies as opposed to working for just one company.

Many people do Affiliate Marketing full time and they don’t have to deal with customer service, shipping orders, or anything else. All they do is promote other people’s products or services, everyday.

Other people, myself included, use Affiliate Programs in conjunction with their own products or services, by using Affiliate Programs as front end products, up sells, and back end products. For example, if you had an information product about weight loss, you might want to market exercise equipment, exercise clothing, vitamins, or other items or services that are related to weight loss along with your weight loss information product – to increase your revenue.

Some people even give away low cost information products, such as ebooks, in order to sell high ticket Affiliate Products or Services. Alternately, some people just use inexpensive affiliate products to enhance their own high ticket products or continuity programs, such as membership sites.

There has been some confusion about what Affiliate Marketing actually is. Many Merchants who have products and offer Affiliate Programs for those products might say that they sell their products through Affiliate Marketing when, in fact, they have Affiliates who sell the products for them, but they are actually Merchants or Affiliate Program Managers.

So basically, Affiliate Marketing is selling someone else’s products or services through various means, for various reasons – either to earn an income, to enhance a product, or even to sell an additional product. In fact, many people use low end Affiliate Products as lead ins, or entry level products, for higher end Affiliate Products and never actually create or promote a product or service of their own.

Is money being made? You’d better believe there is! If you include all products and services that are sold through Affiliates, Affiliate Marketing is essentially a billion dollar industry, even though it isn’t technically considered an industry in its own right.

Right now there are thousands of Affiliate Marketers that you have never even heard of promoting Affiliate Products and collecting huge commission checks every month. Why haven’t you heard of them? You haven’t heard of them because they are not in the Internet Marketing products market. They are in other ‘consumer’ niches, such as weight loss, health care, sports, gambling, education, financial products or any other niche that you can think of.

If you have ever searched for information or products related to your interest on the Internet you have most likely come into contact with an Affiliate Marketer without even being aware of it. You may have even purchased a product through an Affiliate Marketer without even knowing it.

Even Google AdSense can be considered as an Affiliate Program even though it isn’t technically called that. EBay has an Affiliate Program, as does Microsoft. There is an Affiliate Program available for just about any product that you can imagine.

Affiliate Marketing presents a win-win-win situation. The owner or maker of the product being sold is making money. The Affiliate Marketer is making money, and the customer is getting what they want or need. Everybody wins. Affiliate Marketing has also been around for longer than you might think.

Many people think that affiliate marketing started sometime after the Internet came into existence. This is wrong. Amway, Avon, Mary Kay – all of these are essentially Affiliate Programs, but the people who were actually doing the Affiliate Marketing were called Distributors or Representatives – and they are still called Distributors or Representatives to this day.

Affiliate Marketing can even include Network Marketing. Affiliate Marketing is the act of selling a product for a commission. Network Marketing also involves selling a product for a commission, but also focuses on bringing other resellers (or Affiliate Marketers, Distributors or Representatives) into the program as well. Many Affiliate Marketing Programs provide incentives for you to not only promote their products or services but to promote the Affiliate Program as well.

Although Affiliate Marketing is different things to different people, the goal is the same – to make money. Affiliate Marketing offers you the opportunity and ability to make money without creating a product of your own, without having to deliver the product and without having to provide any customer service; an Internet Marketers dream come true.

If you would like to learn more about Affiliate Marketing, or you would like to become an Affiliate Marketer but don’t know how to go about it, I have a free Affiliate Marketing Course that explains the ins and outs of Affiliate Marketing.

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