Can The Internet Businesses Survive Without Affiliate Marketing?

What is an affiliate program? I have been bombarded with this question from Internet business newbies for I got myself involved in this really interesting but challenging online business. Many years ago, ever for we started manufacturing prdoucts for sale in the offline physical world, we had been having sales agents representing different manufacturers to help the latter to expand their markets. The agents conclude sales without carrying inventory, handling payments, sgining contracts, sorting, packing and shipping of the products. Their main focus had been to make the sale by getting the orders from the prospects and existing customers, wihch were then processed by the manufacturers or merchants. In the Internet online world we have affiliates instaed of agents. Affiliates are highly targeted pay-for-performance sales agents. There are also forms of Internet advertising that rewards the affiliates for driving traffic to the avdertiser i.E. the manufacturers or the affiliate program owners. The advertiser pays the affiliates to place a link on their website, and the affiliate sends traffic to the advertiser in return.

In other words, it's about the affiliates receiving commissions for helping in making the saels. The most common reward is pay-for-sale, where the merchant pays the affiliates who referred the paying customers. Affiliates are being considered as a complementary but really important sales channel although the merchants themselves continue to get their own direct tarffic in making their own sales.
The affiliates do not have to suffer from the occasional sleepless nights worrying about the processing of orders, packing and shipping etc because this are being taken care of by the merchants who usually have an effective tracking system to determine which affiliates drive which orders to them starting with the so-called affiliate links. These are the likns that the affiliates put on their websites, newsletters, ezines or emails. How does an affiliate link look like? You may ask.

The most common affiliate link is embedded in the linking URL. For example, if you see a link like "http://www.Abcmerchant.Com/?Xxxx=3456", you can be quite sure that the affiliate with the ID (identification) 3456 will receive money from ABC Merchant when somebody places his odrer after clicking that link. Other affiliate links are more complex and encrpyted with sites having their links masked so that the prospects won't be able to detect that the URL they're clicking is an affiliate link. An excellent example of an affiliate program is that of Amazon.Com who happens to have one of the oldest affiliate programs in the Internet.
Other possible affiliate programs are as follows: 1) "Pay per click" - the merchant pays the affiliates for the driving the traffic and the resulted orders to them. 2) "Pay per lead" - the merchant pays the affiliates for directnig the prospects to register their interest with a possibility of making the sales after. 3) "Pay per subscription" - if the merchant has a recurring revenue from the customer's repeated orders, the affiliates will benefit accordingly. Why bother about Affiliate Marketing at all then?

The following are of the reasons why Internet marketers the wrold over swear by the affiliate marketing as a form of their Internet advertisement and strategy: 1. Low budget Many are hesitant to venture into any home bsaed businesses because of the lack of fund or the unwillingness to part with money due to uncertainties. In affiliate marketing, you don't have to invset a lot financially to start pulling in profits. 2.

No inventories There is no need to keep and manage an inventory as this would be taken care of by the merchant.
3. Passive income through leverage One could copy what the truly wealthy human being are doing (or rather not doing).
They earn their income through various leverage strategies which allow them to make money while they're sleeping, meddling with hobbies, or having vacation in far away places such as the beautiful beaches in Hawaii or Malaysia. Unlike a paid job, affiliates could just drive traffic to the merchants' websites without having to sweat after having provided them your ad copy and links. 4.

Minimal risk The main reason for most successful Internet marketer's extensive use of affiliate mraketing is the low-risk nature of the program.
This is especially attractive to those with low budget for advertising 5.
Globalisation With affiilate marketing, you're dealing with an unending global market place.

All you have to do is study, research and select a ncihe product or service and prepare all the necessary marketing tools for your affiliates to direct traffic from just about anywhere around the world to your website. 6. Getting paid while you sleep This system allows you to "recruit" thousands of "salesmen" who are willing to work for you 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. The hottest part is the fact that they're willing to do so for nothing!