If you want to earn a bit of income on the side, perhaps you should consider joining an affiliate program.
An affiliate program is one where you become an independent affiliate of a company or part of a big affiliate marketing network.
In both cases, your task is to bring visitors to the website of the company or companies that you’re marketing online.
In some cases, referring visitors is not enough; you will earn revenues only off your referrals that will do the desired action after they get to the website (e.g. signed up for a newsletter, bought a product, etc).
Minimum Requirements
The minimum requirement for becoming an affiliate marketer is internet savvy and marketing know-how.
You really have to know the internet like the back of your hands. No, you don’t have to know extremely technical things such as how information is transformed into digital bits for transmission over internet protocols.
However, you do have to know how people usually use the internet, how they look for the information, product or service that they need, which places online they like to hang out in, etc.
The only technical thing that you perhaps should know in affiliate marketing is basic html.
It would be better though if you do know how to use and read more advanced codes. This way, you can easily modify your marketing materials online.
Having a website is also not a strict requirement in becoming an affiliate. Some affiliates actually buy advertising space from established and high-traffic websites.
They also use social networking sites, blogging sites and other venues for promoting the products and services of their advertisers.
However, some affiliate programs do require that affiliates have a website before they can get accepted. If you’re thinking of joining such an affiliate program, then you have to learn the basics of web site design.
Earnings
There are various types of programs that you can join. Two have already been mentioned, the cost-per-click type of affiliate program and the cost-per-action type. The third type is the cost-per-impression type of program.
In the first type, you will get paid a certain amount of money for every click on an ad for which you are responsible.
In the second type, you will get paid a fixed fee for every successful sign-up that you sent the company or a fixed percentage of the revenues earned from your referral.
In the third type, you get paid a fixed fee for impressions; say, you’ll get paid 2 for every thousand views on the page where you have placed your ad.
