Why Affiliate Marketing Is a Wonderful Method of Making Money for Bloggers

If you have a blog which has got a decent amount of traffic then you can monetize that blog in many different ways. You can sell your own products or services if you have any. Or else you can promote affiliate offers. You can sell advertising space on your blog or you can display AdSense ads so that whenever any visitor clicks on these ads you make some cash.
Out of all the above mentioned monetization methods, I personally prefer methods 1 and 2. Selling your own products is one the best ways to making money when you have good amount of traffic coming to your blog. However this is not possible for a majority of bloggers. Most of them do not have their own products or services. So that leaves us with the second option - affiliate marketing. We shall discuss a little about this method in this article.
Affiliate marketing is about promoting the products or services of other people in return for commissions. There are many companies and product owners who are willing to pay you commission to promote their products. Suppose I run a web development company. I might recruit affiliates and if they bring me customers I give them certain percentage as commission. This is a very lucrative and excellent way of making money. Almost anyone can start affiliate marketing as you do not need to have any product of your own.
Another big benefit of affiliate marketing is that you do not need to invest any money. Suppose you want to sell some items on eBay or Amazon. In this case you have to first buy the products at cheaper rates and then try to sell them at a profit. There is risk involved because there is no guarantee that the items would get sold. There is also the initial investment needed to buy the items in bulk whereas in affiliate marketing there is no need for investment and hence risk factor is also minimized.
Introduction to Affiliate Networks:
You might be wondering where you can find products to promote. For this you can join an affiliate network. An affiliate network brings product owners and affiliates together. Suppose person A is a diet expert who has a course which teaches people how to lose weight with proper, healthy dieting. He wants to make more sales of his product. So he joins the affiliate network as a publisher. You, on the other hand, have a blog which is in the health niche. You are looking for some good quality products which you can promote on your blog. You can join the network as an affiliate.
When you join the affiliate network, you can browse through different products available for promotion and choose whichever product you like best. You will be given a customized link which you can then place on your blog. If any visitor clicks on this link he will be taken to the product's page, and if he makes a purchase you will be credited for the sale and will earn some commission for it.

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