Using affiliate marketing for your small business

Small business owners are continually looking for ways they can market their business, and more and more are turning to the Internet to successfully find new customers and attract business to their site.

One way you can do this as a small business owner is through affiliate marketing.

What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a relationship between the owner of a website and an online merchant. Using affiliate marketing, the website owner (or affiliate) will place ads throughout his website that help to sell the merchant's products or services or to direct more customers and traffic to the website. In return for providing this advertising, the website owner gets a share of the money made from transactions that came from his website.

Affiliate marketing has three main avenues you can explore to make money or to promote your business:

• Pay per Sale. With Pay Per Sale affiliate marketing, each time a sale or deal is made as a result of the advertising on the website owner's site, the merchant will then give the website owner commission on each sale. Depending on the amount of commission and the money charged for the products or services, this can be lucrative for both parties.
• Pay per Lead. With Pay per Lead, the website owner is paid an agreed upon amount each time a lead comes to the merchant's site or the lead contacts him about products or services. The amount of money is generally less than the amount of a pay per sale, but can be negotiated to be more if the lead turns into a sale.
• Pay per Click. This type of affiliate marketing is very common and is based on the amount of clicks the merchant's website gets. Each time someone leaves the website owner (or affiliate's) website and visits the merchant's by clicking on the advertisement, money is deposited in the affiliate's bank or Paypal account. Depending on the product, this amount can be mere pennies or it could be as high as dollars.

With affiliate marketing, both parties benefit. As a small business owner, you could increase your sales and your cash flow as either an affiliate or as a merchant.

Affiliate marketing as an affiliate, or website owner, is the preferable type of marketing for their small business because they essentially don't really do anything-after placing the ads on their website, they can start making money immediately. There is no selling, promoting, or anything else.

Affiliate marketing as a merchant will generally result in a bigger payout than being an affiliate since they are getting actual sales, not just commissions, but there are other benefits as well, including:

• Free advertising. In exchange for commissions or predetermined amounts, the merchant small business owner is getting free advertising throughout the web. As many business owner's know, advertising can be a huge chunk of their expenditures.


• Better exposure. As a merchant, you can place ads all over the web, on as many websites as you want. The more websites you place advertisements on, the more exposure you receive in return.

Successful affiliate marketing requires thorough research for both the affiliate and the merchant to ensure a successful and profitable relationship. Ask for references, and make sure their site is one that gets enough traffic or that is related enough to your small business to get a reasonable amount of traffic to your own.

Affiliate marketing for your small business can be very profitable.

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