You’ve probably heard of the term affiliates and see that word at the bottom of many different websites that are offering a product but what is being an affiliate or an affiliate marketer all about?

Essentially, affiliate marketing is about finding someone who is offering a product similar to what you have knowledge and ideas about and then agreeing to advertise that product in many different forms for a commission when a sale is made from someone viewing your various methods of marketing.

When you are advertising a product as an affiliate to a company you will be given a unique link to that product that has your affiliate ID in it. This way the customers that come to the company’s website from your link are associated with you and only you.

So if you tweet about your product and use your affiliate ID link then anyone who clicks on the link and buys the product will earn you a commission.

Commissions can range anywhere from 5 of the product price. You can even make money for someone signing up for a free trial in some cases. Every company is different in how much, how often, and in what form they pay you.

These companies can use their own affiliate program where they have to keep track of your statistics and sales for you or they can outsource that to another company like clickbank, linkshare, or commission junction who keeps track of the statistics for them and you, as well as pays you your commission and their share of the sale. Most companies opt for the second option as it is well worth to pay a small fee to have someone else handle affiliates for you. It’s easier for the company in question and the affiliate marketer.

Affiliate marketers have the easy end of the stick of the whole process. Once you send someone to a product that you are promoting you don’t have to worry about them anymore in the sense of sales and happiness with the product. That is up to the person selling the product or the company that they are outsourcing to. Your job is to get them to the product and make the sale. That’s it.

One thing many marketers learn quickly is that the trick to being a sincere and effective affiliate marketer is marketing products that you believe in and know something about. The fact that there are thousands of products to market can make it tempting to try and make money off of as many products as possible. But if you know nothing about the product you advertising methods can lack sincerity and actual reasons to buy the product.

On the other hand if you are passionate about a product and market it with that passion then your ads will show sincerity, knowledge, and passion that so often motivate other to become passionate as well.

For instance, if you are a huge advocate for alternative health then marketing products for alternative health would be a great fit for you; whereas, if you think that alternative health is a make believe idea then you may want to focus on something other form of products to market instead of trying to talk about how effective acupuncture really is. Put some passion and fire behind your marketing and it will shine through.

Once you find something that you are passionate about you have to find what method of marketing works best for you and when you are online, you have many methods available to you. Articles, classifieds, pay per click, banner ads, websites, blogs, e-mail, forums, social sites and more. You just have to find what works best for you or a combination thereof and go with it.

The great thing about being an affiliate is that most of the companies will supply some sort of help to advertise their product. They may give you articles to use or banner ads or keywords that are effective. When they offer you help for promoting their product you should use what you can as they have done the testing and tweaking for effectiveness for you.

Who is this for? Affiliate marketing is for anyone who can convey their passion and knowledge about something and convince others to be passionate as well.

It’s for anyone who wants to sell people stuff that they actually need and that will benefit them in their life.

It’s for anyone who wants to seriously work from home while making a difference in the world in many different ways.

It’s for anyone who is willing to put in some work to see some self made results. This is one of the great things about it. You see the results of your work and get paid for those results.

This type of work can be done from anywhere in the world as long as there is an internet connection and the money made through it is dependent on the affiliates knowledge and drive. Just like everything, the more work and honesty you put in the better then results.

If you have heard that you can make millions by putting an hour of work in a day, you have been mislead. That could possibly happen down the road after many automated process are in place for you but in the beginning it’s going to be some work.

The great thing is if you enjoy doing it, then it’s not really called working but instead it’s called following your dreams. And if you are helping other people find stuff that aids them in their life then you are doing a good service to this world while following your dreams. You can’t go wrong with that.