ONLINE AFFILIATE MARKETING (DOES IT REALLY WORK?)

Yes; affiliate marketing is really the place to be in my opinion. In all the online jobs, you could find an element of affiliate marketing in one way or the other. It has gained so much prominence that hardly would you find a business website that is without a package for affiliates.

What is Affiliate Marketing at all?

In the lay man’s language, I would say that it’s nothing but online lead generation, referral or better still, selling somebody’s products. It is possible to create an affiliate account with an online merchant and place your promotional link somewhere in the web so that if somebody clicks on it, he will be directed to the merchants website, for instance Target.com.

Should this customer eventually make a purchase through your link, Target.com will reward you with a percentage of the sale. The commission varies from one merchant to the other and this program works well for both parties because it is a kind of win-win situation.

I am sure a question that will run through your mind by now is how does the merchant track your sales in order to reward you for your efforts? Pretty simple, a unique web address designed, carrying your affiliate details and is put in the URL solves the problem as it enables the merchant to track that sale to you the affiliate. Interestingly, majority of these affiliate links have got a piece of program called ‘cookie’ which is stored on the visitors’ computer, some for 3 or more days.
Some ‘cookies’ can even last for months or a year.

What the cookie does is that even if the visitor does not buy the product that very day but returns sometime latter to purchase it, the sale could still be identified and credited to your affiliate account.

The only thing I find as a limitation is that, after you have referred the customer through your link, any other thing that goes on is beyond the affiliate. However, I think that the advantages of making money online in this way far outweighs this limitation and it should not be a reason for one not to venture into the affiliate business or online affiliate marketing.

It is worth noting that it’s a genuine and very legal way of making money online and there is no limitation to the amount of revenue that could be generated.
The internet is enormous and an affiliate can actually make a fortune by reaching out to just a small fraction of it.

The most interesting and perhaps economical feature about the business of affiliate marketing is that it is entirely free to sign up with almost all merchant websites.