Is Affiliate Marketing Illegal?
Some people think that because affiliate marketing is so easy that it’s illegal, or at least should be. But it’s not! Having played the money game for more than 30 years, first as a Wall Street venture capitalist, then as an offline entrepreneur building technology companies, and now as an affiliate marketer, I can honestly say it’s the closest thing to stealing, without the risk of doing jail time.
It doesn’t take much time to learn. You don’t need any special tools except a laptop computer. You can do it from the comfort of your home or from Starbucks while having a java bowl. You can even do it while you're sleeping.
Sound too good to be true? Then keep reading!
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
When a company offers a product or service for sale on the Internet, they set up what’s commonly known as an “affiliate program.” These companies (called "advertisers") offer sales commissions to third parties (called "publishers") who send prospects to their websites. If the prospects they refer make a purchase. The sellers pay the publisher a sales commission ranging from 5% up to 75%, depending upon the type of product.
So affiliate marketing is simply the process of identifying companies with affiliate programs, signing up as an affiliate, and then sending prospects to their site and collecting commissions for each sale made. It’s simple, easy and can be very lucrative. As a matter of fact, hundreds of thousands of people are already making five, six, and yes, even seven figure incomes with affiliate marketing. The reason that people can make so much money is that it’s a business that can easily be automated.
How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?
When a company is offering a product for sale on the Internet, they set up an affiliate program. After deciding how much commission they’ll offer to third parties, their computer programmers create an affiliate system within their sales website that automatically creates “affiliate links”. An “affiliate link” is a special web address to the product site that contains a unique tracking code appended to the web address. This unique code is assigned to each affiliate and tracks their sales and commissions.
Once you get your affiliate link for the seller, you create a simple affiliate site (or what is often called a mini-site) and get a URL (web address) for your site. Let’s say you get the URL www.HowToRaiseCats.com. On your new site you write some copy about a book about cats and why you’re recommending it. Once your site is working, then you drive traffic to it with Google ads or banner ads or articles or emails.
When visitors come to your site, read your recommendation (assuming it’s a good one) and click on your “affiliate link” at the end of your recommendation, your visitor will automatically be sent to the site selling the cat book. If they like the book and purchase it, the cat book site will know you sent that particular buyer, and issue you a commission check.
It’s that easy, which is why people wonder if affiliate marketing is illegal. The truth is that most Fortune 500 companies (everyone from Wal*Mart to Home Depot to CompUSA) have 100% legitimate, legal affiliate programs.
The Long Slow Road to Affiliate Frustration
The most difficult part of getting started in affiliate marketing is setting up your websites. There are many technologies you'll need to master in order to start making serious money as an affiliate:
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web hosting
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HTML, PHP, mySQL, javascript, etc
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headline generator
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email autoresponders
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traffic tracking
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split testing and conversion measurement
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audio and video manager
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credit card processing
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the list goes on and on…
All this techno mumbo-jumbo is why most fledgling affiliates take 12-18 months to get their first website up and running. Since most are on a low budget they try to learn how to do all of it themselves without the help of an expensive webmaster. This puts them in a position where they are spending 90% of their time on the technology and only 10% of their time on traffic and conversion. This is exactly the opposite of what they should be doing to be a successful affiliate marketer!
The Short, Quick Road to Affiliate Riches
New integrated internet marketing software has recently been developed that contains everything you need to get started is in one easy-to-use hosted application. All you do is sign up, pick a URL (web address), put in your affiliate link and add your sales copy. Not including writing the copy, you can have everything online in less than 30 minutes without hiring a webmaster and without learning any technical stuff.
Each Smart Money Website account comes with 3 affiliate sites and 3 home study programs that show you exactly how to make your first $50K online as an affiliate marketer.
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