Making Money at Home With Affiliate Marketing

 With many jobs getting cut and the economy slumping, you may find yourself among the many people looking for potential new sources of income. Finding a way to make money at home would allow you to spend more time with your family and still get the extra funds you need. If this sounds appealing to you, then you might be interested in learning about affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is similar to being a salesperson for one or more companies. For each sale you make through your affiliate link, you earn a commission. In some cases, however, you can actually earn a commission based on people taking a specific action, such as requesting a free sample, even if it never results in a sale.

While it is similar to being a salesperson, there are some important differences. As an affiliate, you are not actually an employee of the company, and you can not represent yourself as such. Also, you are not restricted to any one company. That is, you can become an affiliate for as many companies as you would like.

So, how do you become an affiliate? That depends on whether or not the company for which you want to be an affiliate runs their own in-house affiliate program or if they are part of an affiliate network. By far, the most common is for companies to become members of affiliate networks because this takes most of the the administrative work of running the affiliate program away from their employees.

If the company is part of a network, in many cases you simply need to join that network and you can promote their products. In some cases, however, the network requires you to apply to each company to become an affiliate, even though you are already part of the network. For companies that are not part of a network, you will need to join the program through the company itself, usually through an application you'll find at their website.

Aside from having access to all of the companies and products through an affiliate network, joining programs through networks has other advantages as well. For example, the network is independent of the company and can assist in any disputes you may have with a company in the network. Also, since they are in the business of administering affiliate programs, you can generally expect them to pay on-time, on a regular basis, and that they will offer you statistics about your sales that can help improve your marketing efforts.

Of course, there are some advantages to the independent programs as well. Some of the biggest and best known programs are independent, such as Amazon and eBay. And, depending on the company, you may find you have less competition when marketing their products than you would for a company in a network.

Getting started as an affiliate is actually pretty simple and straightforward. Simply choose the affiliate network or company you want to work with, along with the product or niche market you want to target. Then all you have to do is promote the product or company using your affiliate link.