Affiliate marketing is becoming one of the most efficient and effective ways for merchants to advertise online.

The basic idea behind affiliate marketing is that a merchant rewards a website owner for the leads or sales they generate through promoting a product on their site.

Affiliate marketing provides you with heaps of benefits as a merchant:

It gives you a wider market in which to advertise your product or service. 
It will give your product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques.

You choose what you pay your affiliates for.
Select a program where you only pay for results – whether they are sales or qualified leads.

Control your marketing materials. 
You provide the banners, text or graphics for your affiliates to use on their websites, and you can change them whenever you like.

Choose what incentives to offer your affiliates.
You can vary the amount of commission you offer for different advertisement types, for example you could gain more exposure on the affiliate’s website or blog by structuring your program in such a way that a large banner ad will give your affiliate more commission than another smaller link.

You get a group of advocates who are passionate about your product or service.
If you consistently communicate with and support your affiliates well you’ll have a motivated online sales force that are as passionate about your products or services as you are.

As an affiliate there are also heaps of benefits:

The first and most obvious is that you make a profit. 
The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant’s website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase. The affiliate will earn a commission when a visitor clicking on the ad on the affiliate’s site gets redirected to the merchant’s website and then continues on to buy that particular product. The more referrals, the more profit for the affiliate.

Earn money at home.
You will earn money no matter where you are – even when you’re asleep!

Don’t need to have any sales experience.
One of the best things about affiliate marketing is that you don’t have to deal with any customers or sales. Most programs offer really good support when it comes to providing their affiliates with marketing material, so all you have to do is copy and paste the link into your website or email marketing.

You don’t have to worry about having an inventory. 
You don’t even have to worry about order processing or product shipping- the merchant takes care of all of that!