[ ! ] The Sugarbuzz Project

Those of you who try to make money online have either heard about or have been involved in affiliate marketing. But there are a bunch of n00bs out there still scratching their heads trying to figure out how the big guns like John Chow make so much freaking money on the net who haven’t realized that there’s more to it than just making a very awesome blog. The real money is usually made on the back end, and most of the time it involves affiliate marketing.

Still wondering about affiliate marketing? Really? OK, here’s a little visual for you:

So really, once you get past the big, scary words, affiliate marketing is simply advertising where you earn a cut for your referrals. Now, there are a couple of different ways to go about this. Let’s take a look at a couple of these methods.

Web Affiliate Marketing – This is probably the most prevalent type of affiliate marketing among my readers (and fans of the other guys). While this is a fairly broad term, it essentially means using the web as a tool to promote someone’s product. For example, selling ad space on your blog or website, email marketing (which, although it is done on the web, I don’t personally see it as the same thing as ‘web marketing’), or using social media as a method for promotion. Most of these ads will come from an advertising network, like Logical Media or Market Leverage.

Offline Affiliate Marketing – This is basically the same principle applied to the analog world. One example is if you were to find a person you knew who provided some kind of service, for instance tax preparation, to partner up with. You would promote their service (using word of mouth, fliers, some method of advertising) and in return earn a commission based on your referrals. While it may not be quite as easy as sitting at a computer pasting ad code onto a site, the rewards can be just as great (if not faster, since you wouldn’t have to wait to hit a certain payout threshold).

These two examples are just a basic look at two different realms that affiliate marketing works in. There’s still a lot of good information out there, and I would recommend doing a bit of research. Once you figure out what affiliate marketing is, then it’s only a simple matter of application.