About a year ago, I took some courses on internet marketing to help me promote a home based network marketing business.   Little did I know the vast opportunities that were available in affiliate marketing.  As a matter of fact, I had never even heard of the term before that course.  With the recession and fear of losing jobs, who isn’t looking for an opportunity to make some extra income online?   But how?  And what is the difference between MLM and Affiliate Marketing?

Network Marketing and Multilevel Marketing are forms of Affiliate Marketing

A network marketing company (MLM)  is really a form of affiliate marketing.  Basically you do the marketing (word of mouth) to promote their products.  You also get bonuses for recruiting and training others to do the same. The attractive part is that you can build a residual income from the product sales and efforts of others you’ve recruited.  Many companies have restrictions on using their brand names or trademarks which can make it difficult to market their products online.  Some companies don’t even allow you to be in another MLM if you are a leader in theirs.

How Affiliate Marketing is Different From MLM

BUT, with traditional affiliate programs, you can promote as many different companies and products as you want.  You can even promote competing products!  You can create residual income, but often without the downline bonuses or headaches.  You can market their products using their name brands and they even give you the banners and links to post on your website making is easy to promote online!

How to Market Affiliate Products

One of the easiest ways to promote affiliate products is to write a review.  At the end of the review, you can put a link to products you reviewed.

This week, I ‘ve been researching photo sharing websites that allow you to sell your photos.  My daughter is launching her photography business and has her first photo shoot coming up soon.  We needed a solution for how she can load the pictures and allow the clients to order the prints they want while maintaining their privacy and allowing my daughter to make a profit. Almost all of the reviews I read offered links to “buy now” and those were most likely affiliate links.  So a review called “Ten Best Photo Sharing Websites” may contain an affiliate link to each of the ten photo sharing sites.

So no matter which site I choose to use, the author of the review will benefit from his affiliate links.  Genius!

Then one must ask if the review is biased.  It may be.

But I feel good about our decision to go with Smugmug after reading several reviews (some with links and some without.)

How I Got The Affiliate Link

So once we picked out the best photo sharing site to meet her needs, the next question I had was, “How do I get signed up for the affiliate program?”  I mean she has a large network of friends who are photographers that will probably have the same need.  Eventually, they will see her website and ask how they can get one.  Whoola!  We will have a link for them to use and we will make %40 of their annual subscription if they open an account.  And this costs us absolutely nothing.  Smugmug uses Commission Junction to manage their affiliate program.  Since I already had an account with them, I simply logged in and searched for Smugmug.  I pressed a button to apply to be an affiliate and it was immediate.  I selected a banner and the code and put it on my website.  It was so easy a blonde could do it!

You can do it too!

If you are looking for ways to attract more customers for your affiliate marketing, then I highly recommend you download this FREE report called, Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto.