Make Money with Affiliates

Middleman

Being an affiliate is another word for being a middleman (or middleperson, but I will use man for simplicity sake). You connect two people together. You connect the person looking to buy something with the person who sells it. Your service is bring them together and for that you get paid.

A simple concept that has been around ever since there have existed buyers and sellers. The only difference is that now, with the Internet, it is so much easier to be a middleman. In the physical world a middleman has to 'hit the pavement'. Approach companies that are selling something, have a meeting, sign a contract, make arrangement for product delivery and payments. Fortunately, in the online world it is much easier. It has been reduced to:

  • Go to a website selling something (for example www.ez-web-hosting.com)
  • click on 'Affiliate'
  • Fill in simple registration form
  • copy/paste their affiliate link to your website.

That is it. Done in three minutes. Now every time a visitor goes to affiliate's website and opens an account via this website revenue is generated.

Bring a specific audience to the seller

They key to a successful affiliate program is to make sure that the people visiting your site are interested in what your affiliate is selling. To use an non-online example: An affiliate who has a contract with a company that sells pimped up car accessories would not do to well if he lived in an Amish community. She could have a very favorable contract giving her 30% of all sales, but that will not help because she will not be able to sell anything.

The idea with affiliates is that you have an specific audience that is looking for something in particular. Once you have the audience and know what they want you can start to sell things specifically towards their needs. For example, the audience of this website are people looking:

  • To start their own website
  • Learn about website creation
  • Make money online

Therefore the affiliates for this website will be companies that sells things and services specifically for these type of people. Affiliates for this website are ez-webhosting.com and amazon.com (books and software about website creation and online business).

Do not just sell, sell, sell, anything and everything.

Nobody likes middleman – nobody likes salesman. Always pushing and selling. People do not trust them. Salesman and middleman will say anything to make a sale. Because of this perception and general attitude you need to establish a level of trust with your audience.

Give them something. Know what you are talking about - be a specialist in something. A good example is those get rich quick seminars. They do it right. An energetic person gives a hour long speech. Informs the audience about some market niche, hands out some free information. Gets everybody excited. Then at the very end, only after the audience is happy that it got free information and inspired from a motivational speech, the sales pitch is made - buy this. After that one hour the audience is a lot more likely to buy then it was at the beginning.

This is the same idea with a websites. A visitor comes looking for something. You give them some free information, they notice that you are knowledgeable in the subject. A positive rapport is established. Only at this point is there any chance that the visitor will click on one of your affiliates.

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