I had a classmate in graduate school that was paying for his school doing something he called affiliate marketing. I didnt know what this was but I thought if he made enough to pay his way through school I wanted a part of it.

I had everything you need to become an afilate marketer, except the most important ingrediant needed, knowledge!

So I asked my friend what was this affiliate marketing thing? He told me it was A risk-free form of advertising in which a company pays its partners a commission for sales and/or leads generated by these partners.. All you have to do is send other people to the affiliate website and they would give me a check twice a month. So affiliate marketing was a internet version of the good ol finders fee used by brick and mortar type business.

Sounded easy but it wasnt. The concept of affiliate marketing is that you get paid for your performance. You dont do work, you dont make money. This works well for the merchant who only pays for the actual work you perform. However what about the individual that depends on his performance to feed his/her family?

Believe me if getting those customer/leads to go to your affiliate website (click through) was easy the merchant wouldnt need you. And please make no mistake the merchant does need you. You see its much easier to leverage marketing at 1% of effort of a thousand people, than it is to 100% of the effort of 1 person.

So how does the individual take advantage of affiliate marketing? Basically, the individual seeking to do affiliate marketing may want to have some knowledge of advertising, understand PPC search engines , some knowledge of email marketing, other ways of generating targeted traffic.

Spending $100 to $350 dollars a month for advertising before you refer the first client is not unusual. This means you start each month in the hole, and as traffic is sent to your affiliate website you slowly recoup until you make a profit. Basically is take money to make money even if you into affiliate marketing.

The concept of this being a risk free endeavor is both not true and not realistic, I dont think there is one single internet business opportunity thats worth the effort which is risk free. Heck if it was easy everyone would be making millions doing affiliate marketing. I think the only person for whom there is no risk is the merchant who only pays for the actual work you perform. Everyone else must put out or get out!

Can you get rich with affiliate marketing? Absolutely, people are doing it all the time, but they are the individuals that have made an effort to learn the ins and outs of affiliate marketing and understand what its really about.

You too can become an affiliate marketing success but the chance of doing so with out a real plan and knowledge is not that good. Here are my suggestions for the individuals wishing to take on affiliate marketing.

1. Check out the merchant completely before you commit your effort and money
2. Never pay to become an affiliate (the whole concept of paying someone to make money for then scares me.)
3. Find a program you like and stick to it. Dont jump from one program to another most will work if the proper marketing is applied.
4. learn as much about marketing as possible
5. Do something every day. Never let a day go by that you dont try to improve your traffic or site raking.
6. Be patient you may loose money before you start to make money.