Affiliate marketing is when a product owner allows other marketers to sell his or her product, and the marketer receives a percentage of the sale. For example, if you have created an informational product that sells for $97 (for example my “Social Media Success Bundle“) and you offer a 40% commission, affiliates would make $38.80 from each one they sell.

This is different from a pay per click program because an affiliate does not make any money from the product owner unless he sells something.  In the offline world, you could equate that to someone working on a 100% commission instead of a salary.

Affiliate Marketing Allows You to Reach More People

Although it is hard to consider offering someone else 40% or more to sell your product when you could sell it yourself for 100%, there are good solid reasons to use affiliates. Number one is that the marketing reach of many affiliates is much, much larger than your reach.   Simply put, you cannot reach near the people by yourself that an army of affiliates can.

Think about it this way – if you have 2000 people on your email marketing list and you have ten affiliates with lists about the same size.  At a 1% conversion rate, you could sell to your own 20 people and make $1940, OR you could sell through your affiliate's lists, giving them the 40% cut and still make $11,640.  A 2% conversion rate could mean $3,880 or $23,280, respectively.

Affiliate Partners Can Multiply Your Efforts

Keep in mind that marketing to a list is only one marketing strategy.  There are other ways to market, including blogging, Facebook lives, Youtube videos, webinars, PPC ads and many more.  When would you have the time to tackle all the strategies that your affiliates use?

If you're just getting started with product creation and affiliate marketing, you might want to list your product on ClickBank. They are not only a marketplace to showcase your product; they take care of handling orders and refunds, plus paying your affiliates their commissions.  ClickBank is a popular place that affiliate marketers go to find products to promote.

I think you can see that using affiliates to market your product is a great marketing strategy.  That's why all the prominent successful marketers use it.  Have you ever noticed that they don't just sell a product by themselves?  They get their internet marketing buddies on board to sell it too.  Why?  Because it works!

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