There are a lot of people who, when they become interested in making money online, turn to Affiliate Marketing. This is not surprising as it can be a fairly easy entry into Internet income; at least it seems so at first. In going the Affiliate Marketer route, there is no need to have your own product and, in some cases, you can even get by without a web site. There are some affiliate programs that actually provide each of their affiliates with their own replicated web site to sell the products or services. Others running affiliate programs have sales pages that the marketer can send potential customers to. The mechanism, like email, for sending the prospect is encoded with the affiliate marketer’s unique affiliate ID number so that the proper marketer gets credit for the sale and receives the resultant commission.

A high percentage of people who begin affiliate marketing don’t make enough money to continue in it very long. Often, they end up spending more of their own money advertising and promoting affiliate products and/or services then they actually make. This is truly unfortunate because a lot of these people are already in a precarious financial position and that is the reason they are looking to make some money online. They get so excited about promoting and hopefully selling someone’s product or service that they don’t do adequate investigation before getting involved.

Selling anything on the Internet is normally a very difficult proposition. Anyone considering affiliate marketing should take a serious look at that term “Affiliate Marketing.” Sometimes they are referred to a “Affiliate Programs” or something like that. Trust me on this, the most important word in Affiliate Marketing is Marketing. Even if it does not appear in the phrase, it is the key word. If people don’t know immediately that they are in the marketing business, not the affiliate business, they are destined to fail. It is all about marketing. If you are not into marketing you should not be in Affiliate Programs.

People considering any type of Internet business must be very, very careful. We live in an age where there are a lot of charlatans and unscrupulous people on the internet who are preying on the “newbies” (those new to Internet Marketing). Once one starts looking for an appropriate online business the liars and scam artists seem to come out of the woodwork and have but one goal… to separate you from your money. You have probably seen some of the hype: Make $40,000 by noon tomorrow; Do nothing and make $500 an hour; How I made $1,000,000 in three months. There is no end to these claims, but I can tell you, except in very rare instances they are lies. Think about it for a minute… If I really had a way to make $150,000 per month, would I share it with anyone for $47.00? Not unless it is all of those $47.00 payments that makes me the $150,000. But then, after you pay the $47.00 how will you make that kind of money? You won’t.

Please understand, there ARE legitimate opportunities out there. But it seems to me the crooks outnumber the honest businesses about 10 to 1. So be careful.

If you want to go the business opportunity route instead of (or along with) the Affiliate Marketing I suggest you start small. Keep your required up front investment small enough that if you lose it all it won’t hurt much. Make sure you are comfortable with the program and you can see yourself promoting it. Once you are in, remember it’s all MARKETING!

Wayne C. Weeks —
Wayne is a published author, writer, blogger and Internet Marketer who spent more than 30 years in the mortgage industry. Wayne is also a Christian, Businessman, Award Winning Winemaker, Lay Minister, Private Pilot, Husband and stuff like that…

Low Investment Affiliate Program: http://hotshorturl.com/wo47

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/internet-income-affiliate-marketer-or-a-business-opportunity-seeker-1004396.html

The Different Types Of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing programs have never been as popular before as they are today.  Why?  There can be a number of reasons.  The most probable reason, however, could be the fact that the benefits of affiliate marketing have become clearer to a lot of people now than they were before.

Today, both the merchants and the affiliates can see clearly that affiliate marketing can work for both of them.  The merchant sees affiliate marketing today as the chance to advertise their products at a lower cost.  The affiliates, on the other hand, sees affiliate marketing as an easy way of earning profits online by doing what they like most, and that is by creating websites.

Just as the popularity of affiliate marketing has shifted into greater heights, so has the people’s outlook about it changed.  No longer is affiliate marketing considered today as an alternative method for the merchant to advertise his products, or as a source of additional income for the affiliates.  For merchants and affiliates alike, affiliate marketing is now considered as a main source of profits and revenues.

So the question now is what type of affiliate marketing will work best for you?  Are all affiliate marketing programs the same?  Are the benefits the same?  Or are there affiliate marketing programs that work better than the others?

There are actually different types or classes of affiliate marketing, and the number of types will depend on how one will classify them.  The most basic affiliate marketing programs, however, falls under two categories: pay-per-click (PPC), and pay-per-performance (PPP).

•    Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is the most popular type of affiliate marketing for affiliates with small websites, and probably the easiest way for them to earn money.  In this affiliate marketing type, the merchant pays his affiliate whenever a visitor is referred to his site, that is whenever someone clicks through the merchant’s banner or text ads.  The affiliate gets paid a certain amount even if the visitor he referred does not purchase anything from the merchant’s site.  However, typical fees for PPC affiliate programs are small, usually not exceeding a dollar for every click.

•    Cost Per Action  (CPA)

CPA (sometimes known as Pay Per Action or PPA) is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission, and so on) linked to the advertisement.Direct response advertisers consider CPA the optimal way to buy online advertising, as an advertiser only pays for the ad when the desired action has occurred. An action can be a product being purchased, a form being filled, etc. (The desired action to be performed is determined by the advertiser.) The CPA can be determined by different factors, depending where the online advertising inventory is being purchased.
o    Pay Per Sale (PPS)

In a pay-per-sale type of affiliate marketing, the merchants pay the affiliate a certain fee whenever the visitor he has referred to the merchant’s site actually buys something from the merchant’s site.  Affiliates are often paid on commission basis, although other merchants would opt to pay a fixed fee.  But no matter what the basis of the fee is, it is generally higher than the fee paid to affiliates in a pay-per-click affiliate program.

o    Pay Per Lead (PPL)

The pay-per-lead type of affiliate marketing is a slight variation of the PPS type and is often used by insurance and finance companies and other companies who rely on leads for their company to grow.  In this type of affiliate marketing, the affiliate is paid whenever the visitor he referred to the merchant’s site fills up an application form or any similar form related to the business of the company.  Compensation for this type of affiliate marketing is based on a fixed fee whose rates approximate that of the fixed fee in the PPS type.

Aside from these three specific types of affiliate marketing, a lot of other affiliate marketing types exist.  If the classification is based on the depth of the affiliate network, it can be classified as single-tier, two-tier, and multi-tier affiliate marketing.  There is also another type of affiliate marketing that pays the affiliate each time the customer he has referred purchases something from the merchant’s site.

•    Single-Tier, Two-Tier, and Multi-Tier Affiliate Marketing

These types of affiliate marketing are based on the different levels or tiers in the affiliate network by which payments are made.  In a single-tier affiliate marketing program, the affiliates are only paid based on the direct sales or traffic he has referred to the merchant.  All the previously mentioned affiliate marketing types (i.e. PPS< PPL, and PPC) fall under the single-tier classification.

•    In two-tier affiliate marketing programs, the affiliate is not only paid for the direct traffic or sales that he refers to the merchant’s site, but also on every traffic or sales referred by various other affiliates who joined the affiliate program through his recommendation.  Multi-tier affiliate marketing works the same way, although the affiliate gets additional commission for a wider number of affiliates in different tiers in the affiliate network.

•     Residual Income Affiliate Marketing

In residual income affiliate marketing, the affiliate gets paid not only once for every customer he has referred to the merchant’s site.  Rather, the affiliate is also paid whenever the customer he has referred returns to the site and purchase another product.  Compensation for such type of affiliate marketing is based on either sales percentage commission or fixed fee basis.

The different affiliate marketing types would virtually work differently for merchants and affiliates alike, and each would generally have their own list of benefits.  Which type of affiliate marketing will work best for you?  It is not really for me to tell.  Rather, it is for you to choose which type of affiliate marketing program will suit your needs and characteristics best.