What is Affiliate Marketing?

What is Affiliate MarketingI must admit when I first heard of the term affiliate marketing many moons ago I thought it was something like pyramid schemes – nothing could be further from the truth!   Affiliate marketing is basically the internet’s version of a salesperson paid on commission.

I bet you didn’t think I’d sum it up quite so quickly did you?  Well I will elaborate because I am known to enjoy talking and I’d hate to let anyone down by not waffling on a little bit 🙂

NOTE: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases – more information below

I’m sure you’ve heard of Amazon – one of the biggest online marketplaces – well they actually ’employ’ affiliates and are generally a blogger’s biggest source of affiliate income (depending on the niche and whether or not the blogger lives in a nexus state, but I don’t want to get too bogged down!).  This means that if I decide to write a post about my favorite labeling machine I can link to it on Amazon and if you realize that you really need one to you can click on the link and I’ll be paid a small commission because I sent you to Amazon.   Simple really isn’t it?

Now Amazon is far from the only affiliate around, many companies who sell things online will have an affiliate program either run by themselves or run by companies who specialize in running affiliates on behalf of companies.

There are also a few companies who let you earn affiliate commission without even having a blog, these are used by influencers who sell via their email list or their social media accounts.

If you are interested in earning money online then why not start by checking my resource page where I talk about everything I use to earn an online income.  I also have a number of different articles about earning money online which you are welcome to browse.  I will be adding more over time (24 hours in a day just never seems enough time for me!).

If you have any questions then please ask away, I’ll try to answer them promptly and if the answer isn’t straight forward then you may just inspire a new blog post 🙂

Hi I’m Louanne aka Lou16, welcome to my blog! I just wanted to let you know that this post may contain affiliate links which means, at no cost to YOU, that I might receive compensation if you purchase something through a link on my site. In the online world this is called ‘affiliate marketing’ and is a very common way that bloggers make their money, if you want to find out more then check out this post to find out what is affiliate marketing and how we make money on this site,  If you want to see my full affiliate disclosure and the other ‘legal stuff’ then click here.