What exactly is an affiliate program?

[Tkimx93]

Okay it may sound stupid of me to ask this but what exactly is an affiliate program? I mean i hear many sucess stories of how people became rich over it but what exactly is it? and how does this work?
i sort of get the concepts but i cant really put them together.. if you know the affiliate program well , can u explain it to me?

[SophieM]

I sell your products and usually get a percentage of the sale. Personally, I set up a web page and do a pre sell then send them on to the order page of the actual creator.

[gregdavidson]

An affiliate program is basically a program you can join to earn a percentage of any sales that are generated from your leads. The easiest way to join an affiliate programs is to signup for an account on a website like Linkshare.com, CJ.com, or Performics.com. This is basically a network or marketplace where you can join multiple affiliate programs under the same account. There's also less of a risk of you being ripped off by "in-house" affiliate programs that are managed by one person.

Affiliate marketing is basically a term used to describe how people make money with affiliate programs. The most popular way is to create a "landing page" that's specifically used to advertise one affiliate program or a list that compare related affiliate programs. For example, you could compare 5 of the top online dating sites and include your affiliate link under each description. Most people use pay-per-click programs like Adwords to generate traffic to their landing pages. The goal of this method is to make more money than you're investing into advertising. For example, if you made a $40 sale or "conversion" off every $20 you invested into advertising you would make $20. If you scaled that by finding more keywords that produce the same results you could possibly make a lot of money. Another way to "scale" your earning is to find other "niches" that work just as well.

[matt_15]

I understand affiliate marketing as this: (please correct me if im wrong)

I set up a web page and advertise it to get lots of traffic. I put a link on my page to your website, the person that went onto your website linking from my page buys a product. your website picks up that the customer linked to you from my pge, and I recieve a percentage of profits from that sale?

[ayaboy]

For what i understand of affiliate correct me if I'm wrong.

affiliate is some who sells some one's products or services in exchange for a commission.^_^

[smith.alex68]

Okay it may sound stupid of me to ask this but what exactly is an affiliate program? I mean i hear many sucess stories of how people became rich over it but what exactly is it? and how does this work?
i sort of get the concepts but i cant really put them together.. if you know the affiliate program well , can u explain it to me?

In its most basic form, Affiliate Marketing is a form of revenue share where the affiliate (or publisher) is paid a commission based on visitors, sales, subscriptions or registrations that have come to the merchant through the affiliate's efforts.