You can earn a tidy side income from affiliate marketing. If you put enough effort in, you can even earn enough to support your family with this. In affiliate marketing one is attempting to get sales commissions for things people buy from online merchants. Typically one publishes a web site, and the web site contains referrel links to merchants or products. The links are tracked and if someone ends up buying the product you receive a commission.
Amazon.com is the grandaddy of this marketing technique, since I believe they were the first to do it. Today there are a zillion companies offering affiliate programs.
To get started with amazon.com visit here: associates.amazon.com and sign up. You will need to have an existing web site.
I think the next step in getting started is to build some product links. They do have a whole section of performance tips, but it doesn't seem geared to some just starting off. If you click on "Build Links" you'll find several types of links to build:
- Product links: Links to a specific product, providing a summary description
- Recommended Product Links: Shows a group of products. You specify a keyword, and amazon's computers selects a group of products to show. The products are changed from time to time, automatically.
- Banner Links: Gives you a flashing banner talking about amazon.com
- Text links: Lets you subtly insert a link to a specific product in the middle of a page
- Search box links: Puts a search box on your site that lets the user search amazon.com.
A simple thing to do is to pick some product amazon.com carries that's related to the topical theme of your site. For example here's something I wrote yesterday: Cool Tool: Programming the Universe
I prefer using text links over product links because of two things. First the implementation for product links produces a poor result when you have a lot of them on a single page. Second, the text links produce a higher revenue per product sold.
Higher revenue? Amazon.com offers variable commissions based on the type of link you use. You'll have to dig a little to find the commission table. If you want to earn more for your effort, study this table.
Let's go to the Product Links section. Even though I don't use them, they do produce pretty results. You can select a product type (e.g. books or DVD) and then type in either keywords or an ASIN. We'll get to the ASIN in a minute, let's first type in some keywords. This is a word or phrase describing the product you want to sell. I typed in "reiki music" and the first which came up is a music CD named Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen. Click on the GET HTML button. It next shows you two things, some HTML code and a "live preview" of how the link will look on your page. I've included the code on this page.
Simply copy the HTML code and paste it into the content of a page on your web site. Make sure to copy this into the HTML code of your site. Then upload your page, and view it in your web browser. It should look similar to the link on this page.
Now, about the ASIN. If you study the HTML code you will see something that says "asins=". Using the above method amazon.com looked up the ASIN for you. What's an ASIN you're wondering? It's a number that Amazon.com uses to identify its products. Go to any product on amazon.com's site, and study the URL. e.g. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071359788/ref=pd_qpt_gw_1/ Just after the product/ is the ASIN. Even easier is to scroll down to the Product Details section, and the ASIN is listed there. For books the product details shows ISBN instead of ASIN, and for amazon.com the ASIN is the same as the ISBN.
Now you are ready to build a the product link differently. Browse amazon.com's site looking for a product that interests you. Find its ASIN as I've described above. Go to the Product Links section of amazon.com's affiliate area, and instead of entering a keyword, enter the ASIN you found. The same product preview shows up. Copy and paste the HTML as you did before.
See? It's very simple. Now, when someone visits this page they'll have an opportunity to purchase the product you're recommending.
There are more link types available, but this should get you started very well.
