What is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing may be defined as:
“Selling products of other people on the internet”
Affiliate Marketing is a simple but powerful concept. It is known as the easiest and the quickest way of earning on the net.
The basic concept of affiliate marketing is to sell the products of other companies on a commission basis, on the internet. The affiliate marketer receives a sales commission on every sale, from the merchant.
You need to follow these simple and easy steps to start earning as an affiliate marketer.
1. First of all you need to search a market which you think is the best to start with. Health, sports, clothing, computers, etc. are examples of some hot market areas for an affiliate marketer.
2. Register with some suitable affiliate program. Choose product(s) to sell. These products are called affiliate products.
3. For every product, you will receive a specific affiliate link. Now you need to promote your affiliate link to get more and more sales. The success of affiliate marketing depends on this step.
4. Finally, after selling the product, you will receive the affiliate commissions from the merchant.
How to Choose an Affiliate Product
Before choosing any product or market, the basic thing you should always remember is that you must have a complete knowledge about the demand and worth of the product. You should choose a product which has a big demand plus it is also more profitable. There are some products which are very demanding but they do not give a healthy profit. Some products carry both the qualities and are ideal for you to start with.
Promote Your Affiliate Link
After choosing the products, you will receive your affiliate links for each product. You can use many ways to promote your affiliate link. The most popular methods are websites, newsletters, emails, blogs, classified directories etc. You can use all these methods of promotion, at the same time, for best results. There are many other tools and methods to do this. The key point is how to drive the traffic that is really interested in what you are offering. If interested and serious, people will visit your website etc, thus being greater chances of sales.
When a visitor clicks on your affiliate link, visits the merchant's website and makes a purchase, you will receive your commission. So the number of sales directly depends on how many people see your affiliate link and visit the merchant website.
How Payments are made to Affiliate Marketers?
There are different ways of paying the commissions. You can get the commissions through checks (to any country of the world). If you have an online account, then you can be paid through PAYPAL as well. International wire transfer procedure is also used for this purpose. Different merchants offer different ways to transfer money. Usually commissions are paid on the start of every month after verifications.
How to find profitable affiliate programs
A successful website can easily make thousands of dollars for you every month. We are providing you with the links of some affiliate networks that will give you the ads to place on your website. First of all they will visit your website and check that either your website has the capacity to get the visitors on it. If they are satisfied, they will give you their product ads of their merchants to promote on your website. The ads may be in the text format or it can be a banner. Place them on your website where you want and then sit back and earn a good amount just for doing nothing.It is not difficult to find profitable affiliate programs. A good option is to search in regular affiliate networks like Click Bank and Commission Junction.
Following is the list of some good, reliable and reputable online affiliate networks that can provide you the best affiliates. You can join many affiliate networks at a time so that you can make a good income.
1) www.cj.com:
Join for free. This affiliate network is acting as an intermediate between the publisher (you the webmaster) and the advertisers. You are required to register here. Your website will be checked and if accepted, then you will be allowed to get the ads. Hundreds of advertisers are there from which you can choose the best according to your website nature. Get the ads or banners of the advertisers and place them on your site.
For every action that is done on these ads e.g. a visitor goes to the advertiser's website, registers there or makes any purchase; all this is recorded by the cj.com. The revenue is collected from all of your advertisers by the cj.com and is paid to you every month. Good websites are earning 10,000 to 15,000 dollars every month.
Their famous advertisers are e-bay.com, Quick Loans, Backcountry.com, Crucial Technology, Expedia, Zappos.com etc
The well known publishers are netflips.com, MyPoints, Ebates etc.
2) www.affiliateseeking.com :
Join for free. This affiliate network is acting as an intermediate between the publisher (webmaster) and the advertiser. Choose the advertisers which you want to be an affiliate. Every advertiser offers you different incentives for every sale, visit or signup to their websites through your website.
4) http://www.element5.com/
Join for free. Element5 enables you to build partnership with software publishers and begin marketing their products. Each sale will generate revenue for you.
5) www.clickbank.com
This is a very well known affiliate network. It only markets products that are downloadable, especially software products and e-books. ClickBank is very easy to join and is very inexpensive. If you are an affiliate, then you will get paid up to 75% in commission.
6) www.linkshare.com
It has more than 600 merchants and 10,000,000 affiliates. If you are an affiliate then you have the chance to promote a larger number of different products. Some famous merchants are Dell, American Express, Disney and others.
7) Sharesale
It is a big network with more than 400 merchants. They pay good commissions. The fee for affiliate to use their service is 20% of affiliate revenue. You don’t need to buy any additional software.
8) www.clixgalore.com
This network has more than 1200 merchants and 2500 programs. All applications are accepted at the time of submitting application so entry is very easy. Usually small and medium level affiliates like to join this network. It offers 2-tier referral payment system for affiliates. Advance payment is collected from the merchants so there are no chances of commission theft.
Conclusion
There are many other networks available on the internet, but above mentioned are more reliable,legit and pays. Register with any of them and start making money.

Wish you the best!