In simple words affiliate marketing is a type of business where income is shared between a merchant (the product owner) and the affiliate (who works for a commission). Whenever a affiliate makes a sale they get a fixed amount or percentage of the sale as commission from the merchant.
There are many advantages in this method of marketing to both the parties.
The benefits from affiliate marketing to the merchant is that he/she just creates a good product and offers a percentage of the revenue to the people who make a sale. The product owner does not have to worry about his marketing because everything will be taken care by the affiliates because they earn commission on a sale.
The benefits to the affiliates are they don't have to create their own product, they don't have to provide support to the customers after the sale. It is taken care by the product vendor.
Every affiliate will be given a unique link which they have to use to send visitors through it and when a visitor through this link makes a purchase, commission will be generated. The most common promotional method used for such marketing is building a website and placing your links in the website. This website should be based around the topic related to the product that you are promoting because more the targeted visitor your website gets better are the chances of making a sale.
People often search the web for solutions that can solve their problem example acne creams, repair xbox etc. If you can just find a product that solves a persons problem then start a website around it and offer tips through your articles in the website and recommend your product so that they will be more likely to purchase it through your link.
Be honest with your recommendations, you need to build trust in this business to get more sales. Keep posting useful and informational articles in your website around a specific topic, more the pages in your website more is the traffic your site gets. Try convert more number of visitors into buyer or customers, this is where the real success lies.
The vendor and the affiliate both have advantages of their own in this type of marketing, they can make more money if they co-operate each other and work. If these two parties work in a good rhythm more money can be made by both. Make a note this business gets easier only when you know how to get targeted traffic through your unique links.
There are many third party affiliate networks where both the affiliate and the vendor can sign up for free. The commission to both sides is paid equally by this network and they take a small share as their fee.
Example of such networks are www.clickbank.com, www.cj.com, sharesale.com and many more. Try to get your hands on top affiliate marketing companies if you are just beginning in this field. They are worth trying out because most of them are free to join and trusted by millions of users in this business.