subject: Setting Up Affiliate Marketing [print this page] Since the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early 1990's, the world has been introduced to many great changes in our daily lives. In addition to the WWW, many new devices beyond the first desktop computers have become available like the laptop computer and smart phones. The portability and power of smart phones allows us to stay connected all of the time, not just when we are in front of the computer. This connection keeps us in touch with people and information in such a way that we feel we always have the help we need, even in unfamiliar places and situations.
Businesses are greatly affected by this change in communication technology and wealth of information availability. Particularly, the publishing and broadcasting industries have been greatly affected. Many print newspapers are going out of business as people get their information online and even books are being made increasingly more available as eBooks, thanks in part to the popularity of devices like the Amazon Kindle and the iPad. Never before in human history has such an enormous change been effected in so little time. Surely there must be an opportunity to capitalize on this technology as it is still in it's infancy.
One of the first ways I became involved in using the internet to make money came with the start of Google Adsense. I could create simple websites targeting a single hobby or idea and ad Adsense ads to them. When my visitors click on an ad, I get a commission for introducing them to the vendor via the ad.
Affiliate marketing is a more direct approach and I can make bigger commissions as a result. With affiliate marketing you link straight to a vendor's site using embedded HTML 'code' provided by the vendor. Clicks by visitors are tracked by the vendors' system so you get paid on the customers you introduce. Its not all that complicated, but is does take some technical skill to get affiliate marketing done correctly.
The original eCommerce websites were set up by companies or people selling their own products. In order to do this though you need to set up an order taking and payment system. In the beginning this was such a big task, I tried it but it took me too much time. This has become much easier now due partly to the enhanced capability or PayPal.
Using something like WordPress to create a blog, you can then add plug-ins to add order taking capability to your website easily, and many great plug-ins are free. There are other content management systems with which you can accomplish the same results, like Joomla! or Drupal, but these are more robust and take longer to learn. If you have your own company or product and want to create a large website though, these tools are the way to go. Either way these tools serve as a platform for setting up your affiliate marking programs.
