If you’re interested in making money on the web, you may have heard people claim that you can make money with affiliate marketing. Many people have already found affiliate marketing to be a great way to make money online. However, before you decide to try your hand at this money making method, you’ll need to fully understand affiliate marketing and how it works

What is affiliate marketing? It’s a business promotion technique that includes e-commerce affiliates being rewarded for bringing customers to companies. The revenue made from these sales is shared between the parent business and the affiliate. This form of marketing allows individuals to market products of others without having to develop a product of their own. It also benefits companies, helping them increase the promotion of their products through affiliates.

It’s a good idea to understand a bit of the history behind it if you’re going to work to make money with affiliate marketing. Revenue sharing has been around for many years, resulting in businesses sharing the revenue made with their business affiliates. However, it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that this concept hit the internet, bringing about what we now know as online affiliate marketing. One of the very first websites that offered affiliate marketing opportunities was NOW. Many companies soon began to see the value in this option, deciding to offer affiliate opportunities. Many of the Web 2.0 services now available, such as video sharing, social networking and blogging, have helped to develop the affiliate marketing industry even further

Today, there are a variety of different ways that individuals can work to make money with affiliate marketing. Some marketers use pay per click advertising to advertise the affiliate products they are promoting. This advertising technique offers the benefit of only costing users if someone actually clicks on the link. One of the most popular options for those involved in affiliate marketing is promoting products through websites. Websites can offer information on products through helpful articles or product reviews, encouraging site visitors to purchase the product. Forums, blogs and email marketing all are used by affiliates to try to make money with affiliate marketing as well.

Of course, affiliate marketing comes with both pros and cons that must be considered. For the affiliate marketer, one of the biggest pros is that a huge investment is not required to get started. Affiliates don’t need to worry about spending money to develop a product, offering customer support for a product or dealing with the record keeping side of a business. All affiliates need to do is promote products and they can make money. Another pro of affiliate marketing is the potential to create a nice income. Even without making a big investment, affiliates have the ability to create a nice income if they are willing to work hard. On the other hand, affiliate marketing does come with a couple cons. One big disadvantage is that there is a learning curve. Affiliates that fail to take time to learn the business may find it difficult to succeed. Learning to rank sites for the first page of google is one of the more difficult tasks for new affiliates to master.