First of all, in case you are checking out The Smartest Search for the first time, what is Affiliate Marketing?  Affiliate Marketing is an online marketing channel that puts merchants in charge of an online marketing sales force.  This effort is beneficial to both the merchant and the affiliate’s website for a number of reasons.

Being successful in affiliate marketing doesn’t come cheap.  You have to spend money to make money so you better ask yourself, what are the benefits of affiliate marketing? Here are a few reasons why it can be totally worth it:

1. It’s Free! – For publishers anyway.  For the merchant who runs their program through a network, there will be a monthly fee. (Smartest Search Merchants can use our Network http://www.squirtgunmedia.com to get fee free conversion tracking and network support!)  For publishers though, membership is free and they can then choose which merchants to promote.  Being a publisher means promoting another website on your own website and any sales generated from your site would earn you a certain commission off that sale.  There is no cost to the publisher to be a part of the merchant’s program after being approved into the pertaining network.

2. Promote One Product or Many – Another great thing about affiliate marketing is that you can really capitalize on promoting all your products or just one if the time is right.  For a normal day out of the year, you may want to promote your entire site, emphasizing your brand and the variety of products that you offer every day.  But when things such as the Super bowl or the death of a celebrity (i.e. Michael Jackson) happen, you are able to promote only those things that are specific to the event.  Sales can take a rapid increase if the timing is right.  The merchants will benefit from this as their sales will increase and of course the publishers will also, as all the sales they drive for the merchant will increase their commissions.

3. You Make Money – For the publisher, there is no real risk to join the program and once you are accepted in, the merchant pretty much provides the affiliate with all the marketing materials need to make sales.  From text links to images and banners, these things are all given to the affiliate free of cost.  Once those are selected by the publisher and strategically placed on their site, they can then make money from those generated sales.  Commissions can vary anywhere from 4% to 25% of the total purchase price and there is also the CPA model of flat fees for actions taken, instead of actual commission. Also, affiliate marketing allows you to potentially make money 24 hours a day.  There is no close of business, people can purchase online at any time or any day.

4. Extends the Product Market – Affiliate Marketing paves the way to extend your website’s reach to a much larger market.  More sites that are a part of your affiliate program create more sales for the merchant. If the merchant is picky when adding affiliates to their program, then the affiliates should be in their niche market, increasing the chances for added sales.  Benefit to the affiliate is the commission made each month.  Benefit to the merchant is increased repeat customers and extending the market to a whole new reach.

5. Increased Traffic - Being a part of affiliate marketing will bring you traffic that otherwise you would miss out on.  Potentially increasing your traffic by up to 25%, this traffic is also targeted.  Those that use the publisher’s link to find your site, most likely have a vested interest in purchasing your product or they wouldn’t have clicked on it in the first place.

Affiliate Marketing isn’t for everyone, but if you have a valuable product, an online presence, driven merchants and the money to invest in the program, it can be a very lucrative marketing channel!