Affiliate Marketing 101

Affiliate marketing programs are a great way to get
income for your website, and a great introduction
to e-commerce.  The more people that drop by your
website, the great your chance will be at creating
an excellent income.

Affiliate marketing programs are where a company
offers to pay you a set amount for either a click
through from your website, or a set amount for
visitors signing up, or even a percentage of a
purchase made by visitors as a result of being
referred from your website.

Even if visitors don't make a purchase immediately,
almost all programs offer cookie duration, normally
consisting of 30 - 90 days.  What this means, is
that as long as the visitors have the cookie in
their cache, you'll still recieve a profit from 
the sale.  

The biggest amount of time in maintaining your 
site will be searching and implementing affiliations
with various companies.  Even though there's a lot
of money in affiliate marketing, you have to take
the time to search for the best programs.

One thing that you may not be happy with, is the
idea of other companies banners littering your
website.  If you use too many banners or links on
any web page, it can confuse and help to irritate
your visitors.  More than one animated element on
a web page can be very distracting as well.

Affiliate tracking can also be a problem.  Once
you have applied to become an affiliate for a 
company, they'll usually supply you with a 
personalized link or code.  It's very important 
that you implement this code into your page 
correctly, or you may be sending visitors to the
company without recieving any profit.

A majority of snippets in the code will contain 
a unique user ID, which the company uses to 
distinguish which site sent traffic.  

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