Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy beneficial to both the affiliate and the merchant. The agreement is that the affiliate will use promotion tools provided and approved by the merchant to promote its products and services. For every sale generated by the traffic sent through the affiliate link, the merchant shares a sales percentage. It's a win-win situation for both parties. Merchants get more sales and decrease its advertising cost and affiliates get an average of %50-%75 in commission on the sale price.

The benefits of affiliate marketing for the affiliate

Getting into the affiliate marketing business is definitely the lowest cost startup! It costs absolutely nothing to join an affiliate program. So to get started, the recommendation is to have an independent website where the affiliate links are posted. However, an affiliate can still generate some sales without a website. Therefore, it only costs a web hosting plan and a domain name, often included in the hosting plan. It's also possible to generate free traffic. So really, affiliate marketing is a very low cost maintenance business.

Furthermore there are no specific skills, knowledge or experience required. The eagerness to learn about internet marketing is enough.

Although the affiliate is promoting a product, it is not responsible for delivering it or even stocking anything! The affiliate doesn't even do the customer service! Therefore there are no inventory to keep, no selling per say, no customer service to handle, no billings to do, none of that! All that needs to be done is to send targeted and quality traffic to the merchant's site using the referral link.

Affiliate marketing can start by being a part-time business while keeping a day job. It can take off slowly and once it gets a significant and continuous amount of traffic, it can be set on autopilot. This means that money comes in without lifting a finger!

The benefits of affiliate marketing for the merchant

Rather than paying high cost for advertising campaign, opening an affiliate program is an option to consider decreasing costs for advertisement. Affiliates are sales representatives who get paid on a per sale basis. They are responsible of all costs relating to promoting the merchant's products. Therefore an affiliate marketing program reduces advertising costs and that's one of the reasons why some merchants are able to split up to %75 of the sale!

The more affiliates the merchant has, the more exposure it gets! More traffic means more sales! And of course, more profits!

If the affiliate is not successful at promoting the product for some reason, it's always possible to choose another affiliate program and start promoting another product instead! There are no complicated legal obligations towards one another. The merchant will not reprehend or impose penalties to an affiliate who hasn't generated a single sale. They both move on with no hard feelings.

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