Affiliate marketing is also known CPA (Cost Per Action or Accusation). Before we go through affiliate marketing, we have to know what is affiliate marketing or the definition of affiliate marketing and some related facts.

“Affiliate Marketing refers revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, usually in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.”

The simplest explanation of affiliate marketing is that it is a way of making money online as a publisher or promoter are rewarded for helping a business by promoting their product,  service or site.

There are numerous forms of these types of promotions but in most cases they involve you as a publisher earning a commission when someone follows a link on your website or blog to another site where they then buy something.

Other variations on this are where you earn an amount for referring a visitor who takes some kind of action – for example when they sign up for something and give an email address, where they complete a survey, where they leave a name and address etc.

Commissions are often a percentage of a sale but can also be a fixed amount per conversion.

Conversions are generally tracked when the publisher (you) uses a link with a code only being used by you embedded into it that enables the advertiser to track where conversions come from (usually by cookies). Other times an advertiser might give a publisher a ‘coupon code’ for their readers to use that helps to track conversions.

For example: when a merchant or advertiser wants to promote/sell his product or service through affiliates program, he offers a percentage or a fixed commission to the affiliates for each sale. When anyone sign up to become an affiliate is given a special unique code that enables the affiliate to promote or sell that product or service. The affiliates earn their commissions when someone purchase products or service of the merchant/advertiser through the unique codes of the respected affiliates

Most merchants or advertisers prefer affiliate marketing as a way to promote their products or services because they know they’ll only need to pay for the advertising when there’s a conversion. A merchant or advertiser earns less for each sale that having a network of affiliates promoting but it would almost certainly increase overall sales levels.

Many publishers often choose affiliate marketing because if they find a product or service that is relevant to their contents that earnings can go well in surplus of any cost per click or cost per impression advertising campaign.

Why Blogs are Preferred for Affiliate Marketing

It is certain that affiliate marketing isn’t the only way to make money from blogs and even it won’t suit every blog/blogger but there are a few reasons why it can be lucrative in this medium. Probably the biggest of these reasons is that affiliate marketing seems to work best when there is a bond with trust between the publisher and their readership.

It is found that as this faith deepens that readers are more likely to follow the references that a blogger or author makes.

It is also true that this trust can be broken by promoting wrong products which cause negative impact with affiliate marketing.

Does Affiliate Marketing Means Easy Money?

It is important to know that affiliate marketing do not means easy money, while it can be incredibly profitable. Most people who try it make very little as it relies upon various factors including:

• High volume of traffic
• Finding contents relevant products
• Finding quality and useful products
• Building trust with readers
• Having a readership who is in a ‘buying mood’
• Being able to write good sales copy
• And lots more…

There is also some threat associated with affiliate marketing in that if you push too hard or promote products of a poor quality you can in fact burn readers and hurt your reputation and brand image.

It is also true that affiliate marketing does not work on all blogs. Some blogs are on such topics where it is hard to find associated products to promote – some other blogs attract audiences who are not in a buying frame of mind and there are many other blogs just don’t fit with the blogger’s style or approach.