Common Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing – Common Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing has enjoyed a burgeoning growth in recent years. From humble beginnings where the e-commerce website was not taken seriously as a potentially lucrative way to sell products, More and more businesses have not only taken to e-commerce in a big way, but also put ever more time and effort into their affiliate schemes, realising that they often involve a win win situation for everybody.
Every day new potential consumers come on to the internet, and new potential affiliates look to this business model as a way of starting a business with very little outlay. At their lack of effectiveness is one myth about affiliate marketing that has definitely been dispelled.
One of the most common, and long enduring, of misconceptions concerning affiliate marketing is that it was Amazon, the giant online retailer, that was responsible for creating the world’s first online affiliate program.
Although Amazon’s affiliate system, known as the Amazon Associate Program, was indeed among the earliest to be created, the actual honor of being the very first belongs to the music retailer CDNow. Due to Geffen Records wanting to sell its own artists’ records, but not to do the actual order fulfilment, the concept was born of linking a merchant website to one promoting the merchant’s goods.
Another common misconception concerning affiliate marketing is that it is somehow related to multi level marketing, or MLM. Especially, that it involves the paying of a fee to be allowed to promote the merchant’s products. With multi level marketing, there is nearly always a joining fee to be paid, and often a monthly fee to stay in the program. This is often only waived if the person promoting the program buys a certain amount of product from the merchant they are representing. In true affiliate marketing, no fees of this kind are payable.
Although many, if not most, affiliate programs demand that the website of the potential affiliate is thoroughly checked for suitability, none of them charge fees for this checking to take place. Some affiliate networks can even be joined without any checks taking place, with the joining affiliate then able to promote multiple products from the network’s range.
A further misconception is simply that affiliate marketing is ’small beer’ and therefore not worthwhile. In 2006 over $6 billion was earned in affiliate revenue, much of it by lone sole trader affiliates who started with virtually no investment.
Free online courses are even available which show the reader how to market affiliate products at no expense, beyond that of a computer and internet connection. This is done by writing articles for the popular article sites, with links in the resource box at the bottom of the article pointing to your web page where you try to sell the affiliate product.
Free weblogs, and free pages on social networking sites are also used to drive traffic to the merchant’s sales page. It has never been easier or cheaper to start a business, by selling other peoples’ products on commission.
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