...earch in Google for thedefinition of Affiliate Marketing.I still remember, my early days of induction into the world ofInternet Marketing, more specifically "Affiliate Marketing." Till then, I was completely oblivious to this term. For most ofus, Affiliate marketing is a term that has different meanings.Let me first move to the other side of the line and say thataffiliate marketing is nothing but unnecessary pop ups,newsletter spam, affiliate tracking code cloaking and much m...

...ore.Now from the other side of the line, Affiliate Marketing is away to market your products online by signing up affiliates whohave websites and are willing to advertise your products ontheir site, in return earning a certain percentage of thecommission from the sales they generate.If you take a closer look, for one particular product or acompany, you will find server loads of affiliates, marketing thecompany or a product. Now this is an indicator to itself of theway you market your products on the Internet. To talk about Affiliate Marketing, this one article would notsuffice. Hence, I have divided it into a series of articles.Although I am very tempted to first write about "The tools toimprove an affiliate's conversions" let me stick to thechronology.Why does a company need an affiliate program? Having defined, affiliate marketing, the next obvious questionthat arises is, why a company needs affiliates when it canmarket its products on its own.To answer this, while a company may be very huge in terms of theinfrastructure, or has a really successful product, it cannotsit silent and bank on its own strengths. Further to this, acompany cannot customize the look and feel of the site to suitthe tastes of the local markets. Although there are tools whereyou can cloak your website, it would involve a lot of complexityin terms of the technical and marketing demands. Hence, arisesthe need for affiliates.What makes a company look for affiliates? Let’s face it. Every website which has a decent hit rate doesenjoy a certain niche market. It is mostly for the smaller sitesthat you see a higher percentage of customer loyalty. There arevarious reasons to this; one most obvious factor is the serviceand the personalization provided by the smaller sites. It issites like these which attract companies to negotiate them intosigning up as an affiliate.The mistakes most companies make: In my experience, working withthe affiliate program, one huge error made was that mostcompanies which are into affiliate marketing just design thespecs and set it up on their website and wait for webmasters tosign up with them. Now you never know the kind of traffic you would be attracting.This where the 80:20 rule comes in the picture and that is howmost of the companies strategize their affiliate marketingefforts. A more detailed article about this can be found, entitled:"Eliminating the 80:20 rule"Do you think you are ready to sign up as an affiliate? Perhaps, for most of us, this question never seem to arisebecause of the fact that the commissions offered to an affiliateis huge enough to blind us from the most basic and simple factsto begin with. Let’s face it, if a company offers you a hugecommission for selling their products, you can rest assured thatit will take you a lot of time and effort to make a single sale.I would not quote any numbers here as the commissions differfrom one market sector product to another.A few pointers to keep in mind before signing up as an affiliate:1. Take stock of the situation. Or as the "Gurus" call it, makea SWOT analysis of your site. This will present your website ina very plain and subtle way. Through this you would know whereyour website's strength lies in.2. Scout for the right product for you. This is common sense,but let me reiterate this fact. Always sign up for products youthink will fit in with your website's theme. You would not wantto be a web host and sign up as an affiliate, selling anotherweb host who promises to give you a 50% commission. Now thatwould be very silly to do. The bottom line is that sign up forservices that will "Add Value" to the services provided by yourwebsite.3. The Affiliate Terms & Conditions. This is the saddest part of affiliate marketing. In myexperience, I used to come across at least 2 cases ofmisunderstood affiliates who feel they are cheated out in thedeal. Always ensure that you read the terms & conditionscarefully and clarify with the company incase you have anyfurther queries.4. Prepare your site. Another major problem in affiliatemarketing is tracking. Always ensure that you have some toolsand logs to monitor the traffic on your site and if possible theoutgoing links, clicks, etc. Let’s face it, no matter how big acompany is, setting up the perfect affiliate tracking tools issomething which I have not come across so far. So there willalways be a situation where in you will have to lose out on aconversion. Make sure that you have your back covered with thetools so that your case will have credibility. Remember, a company would never want to deny an affiliate,especially if the affiliate is really genuine. Why? I’m sure youknow the reasons.5. Affiliate Networks or Direct Affiliate? Now that you have allthe details with you, the next question is whether to sign upwith an affiliate network of to sign up directly as thecompany's affiliate. There are a few things to consider here. Iwould not restrain you from signing up with either of theentities as both have their pros and cons.a) If you are looking at a reasonably good tracking system andhassle free set up, then Affiliate Networks would be the rightplace for you.b) If you are not quite sure of the products you want to sell,but you want to set up some affiliate banners, then affiliatenetworks is the best place to sign up.c) If you think you can handle the terms & condition put forthby the company and if you are fairly adept in setting up afoolproof system on your site then sign up with the companydirectly. It will also help you negotiate a custom deal whichwill offer you much higher payouts as compared to signing upwith networks.Keep in mind that affiliate networks are nothing but sites justlike yours who sign up as a master affiliate. By setting uptheir infrastructure, tracking, etc they allow various otherpeople to sign up through them. What happens in this case isthat the affiliate networks are the master affiliates, while youbecome the sub affiliate. So what this means is that the extracommission earned by the networks for the sales you bring, apart of it is used towards providing you with better service.And there are a few networks which also charge you a certain feefor the transactions. But do not think that signing up directlywill be a better deal. Because although this will provide youwith direct interact with the company and in most cases, withthe account manager, you will have to be 100% of your trackingand other problems that might arise.So if you are ready to make some serious money and effortstowards marketing a product, then go ahead, there is no betterway to do it than through affiliate marketing and no, I am nottalking about Google AdSense here.