What is affiliate marketing?

In short, online affiliate marketing is the act of sending someone to a website (through an advertisement or link on your site) and earning a commission when they buy something or submit a request for more information.

Pioneered by Amazon in the 1990s affiliate marketing gives you the ability to make money selling products without holding any inventory or overhead costs. For this reason it is becoming one of the easiest and most lucrative ways to start your own business.

So how do you start affiliate marketing? First you identify what you want to sell. For the purpose of this example, let's say you see an opportunity to sell cellulite cream.

Second, you have to see if there are any merchants or vendors selling cellulite products online. Here is where oDigger comes in. If you do a search for “cellulite” using the oDigger search tool you will get a list of results of cellulite affiliate programs. oDigger tells you the name of the cellulite product, gives a link to the landing page and tells you how much you will get paid per sale.

Choose a cellulite product that looks good and sign up with the Affiliate Network that is carrying the offer. Once you are a member of the network you will be able to log in, get your affiliate links (the links that track your sales) and start earning money for every person that clicks on your affiliate link and buys a cellulite product.

Stay tuned for part 2 of our beginners guide to affiliate marketing. We will go over ways to drive traffic to your affiliate links and give you insiders tips on tools that help drive sales.