The Different Types of Affiliate Marketing

Many people mistakenly believe that affiliate marketing is referring to only the act of selling a product for a company and making a small commission.

However, there are some other forms of affiliate marketing that you need to know about if you are thinking of pursuing it as a business model.

By understanding these various methods of affiliate marketing, you are better positioned to choose the one that you believe will work best for your given situation.

Marketing for the vendor directly:

This is where you sign up for a stand alone affiliate program that a company has for their own products. In other words, they are not using a third party vendor to manage their affiliate program. This might be a specialty company or even a big retail store.

Third party affiliate programs:

This includes companies such as Clickbank, Commission Junction and Linkshare, among others. These companies manage all of the affiliates as well as the payouts and accounting for the companies.

When you sell a product of one of these companies, the third party company is actually the one handling the payment to you on behalf of the main vendor. For instance, if you were selling a certain men's watch, you would sign up for the vendor through the third party company and use a special coded affiliate link. If someone purchases through your link during a certain time period (specified by the merchant's agreement) then you get a commission.

Pay Per Lead:

This type of affiliate marketing is often used by insurance, mortgage and finance companies who are very dependent on getting quality leads. In this method, the affiliate attracts visitors to a page where there is usually a form to fill out.

They are tracked under the affiliate's code, so they are paid once the lead is generated after they fill out the form or application. This is also called CPA (cost per action) as the merchant pays for each time someone does a particular action on their site.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to catapult your income and have your own home based business.

The best advice, however, is to start with one type of affiliate marketing before trying out the others. This way you will have a better grasp of how they work and which ones you like.

A successful marketer often incorporates several methods into their overall marketing plan