Useless Affiliate

I get this a lot from people and we get into a conversation that leads no where. There are some things that I always get confronted with

Affiliate Marketing is Illegal!

Hold on for a second.  First of all I dont’ want to repeat the question again asking you how you found out its illegal. Let me explain the legal issues. There is a catergory called, BlackHatSEO. This one is the illegal way to earn revenue. Most of it is bending the rules and hiding it and some are just wrong. There are some affiliate that do this but not a lot. There is whitehatseo which is purely legal. The way you are suppose to. Is adding a link with a banner and your affiliate link illegal? There are millions of sites that do this and no it is NOT illegal.

I just realized that setting up a blog, setting up a web site, iframing a site, signing up for affiliate networks, and desinging a web page isn’t too easy. In the beginning I was just like everyone else. I always refer back to a point where I was so frustrated at dreamweaver when I still new. I downloaded dreamweaver and then I bought my first domain which was commonsickness.com. My goal was to make a medical site and throw some adsense in it to make some revenue. So when I got to dreamweaver, I tested it out. First I wanted to post a picture in the body of the web site. Easy right? NOO!! It was so hard just to post it the way I wanted it. Believe it or not it took me 3-4hours to figure it out. That was how much I was a newbie back then. I also had a problem of getting the web site from my computer to the internet. That took another hour or so! But now I can do it very quickly since I learned from pure experience.

In the beginning I had a hard time figuring out what stuff meant. It seems that once people start making money and blog like me, they neglect to know the vocabulary. Everybody just assumes that everyone who is reading their blog knows what CTR means. Well I’m sorry but not everyone knows the meaning. Don’t feel like such a newbie because we all started out like that. Sometimes I read a blog and I still need to google what the term they are using is. This post might be one of my “Useless Posts” but I made it specially for newbies. Well here we go. And if you still don’t understand, feel free to drop a comment or send me an email and I will further explain it. Its all self-explanatory but everyone learns in different ways. Maybe you learn by definition and somebody else learns by demonstration. Either way I hope this post helps at least one person.
 
Advertiser - The person who is trying to make a few bucks by driving traffic through a web site through promotion. You are promoting an offer and you will get $$ if a customer buys it.
 
Advertisement – This is seen all around you. It is an attractive picture/video that helps lures the customer so they will buy the product.
 
Affiliate – This is YOU. Someone who is the middle man. You help get the merchant some customers and you will get a certain amount of commission depending on the product/ offer.
 
Affiliate Link - This is the link that is specially made for you so if a customer buys the product you will get credit from their sale or lead. There are ways to cloak your affiliate link from the customer and from the publisher so only you know the information.
 
Affiliate Manger - Once you sign up with a network, you will be assigned an affiliate manager. Somebody who will give you advice and tips on which offers to run. Word of caution, they can even steal all your traffic and commission if they know your keywords and referrer links. Don’t worry there are ways to hide the referrer links.
 
Affiliate Fraud - The amount of revenue that was obtained illegally under the TOS of the affiliate program.
 
Affiliate Tracking - These track your keywords so you know which keyword is converting to make you money. There are many keyword tracking software. Some are free and some cost money. I would recommend

So you want to make some extra income online? Or Maybe you want to make a career with affiliate marketing. Whatever your situation is, you want money. Well if you do not know where to start, you can start here where I can give you a few pointers. For beginners start to read blogs and articles about affiliate marketing. However I repeat do not try to buy any books or videos. Do lots of research first because this will help you succeed on your way to start affiliate marketing. I spent countless hours just researching on how stuff works and trying to understand terms.