It has become a regular line for comedians, mainly on telly panel programmes, to make a joke of adverts saying ‘work at home’ or ‘make money on your computer’. There is a point, there are millions of such advertisements and they are very simple to find on page after page. And, they are getting a bad name since they guarantee the earth, easy cash for little input and see the cash stream in! Nope, the old adage “if it looks too good to be true, it possibly is” absolutely does apply here as what is not explained is the same for anybody building a website for anything is that they need to understand, or know someone who does, SEO.

Permit me, while I admit an interest. I run an affiliate marketing site which I have built as a fishing tackle shop to sell fishing equipment, DVDs, books and travel goods and services for anglers. I have joined several affiliate programs and have put ad links to lots of businesses who provide fishing tackle, insurance for anglers, travel companies offering accommodation for anglers and other ephemera. Why? Well, because when I was learning SEO, I was searching for material on how to improve my familiarity and skills, and very often came across affiliate marketing as a phrase, and after a while I investigated it to find out more. I will explain how it works.

There are many tens of thousands of companies offering goods and services online as we know. They all have the same challenge, which is bringing people to their site to buy stuff. They all have their SEO to promote themselves and their products so that clients can find them on the search engines, but that sometimes is not enough so what they do is to join affiliate marketing programs and offer a cut of any sales brought in by someone carrying their banner or link on a site to their shop. It is very popular method of drumming up business in America and is becoming more so in other countries, and of course somebody creating up an affiliate marketing site like mine can insert links for firms anywhere in the world and still make money.

Where the notices for affiliate marketing are deceptive is that it is really simple to get the site up and the providers provide you whatever you need (you do not need any technical knowledge at all). The main ability is to be able to cut and paste the code for the links. So, the shop can be made and put online in no time flat, but that doesn’t mean anything as how are you going to get shoppers to go to your shop in order to click on the adverts to go to your partner’s online shops? You need SEO to do that, and it does not happen speedily.

However, while the SEO work is having it’s effect, then adverts can be put in the search engines which only cost when they are clicked. The cost can change as you have to bid for placing on the search engine results pages and you have to depend on your website being good enough to hold the visitor and that they click to your partner sites and purchase something.

So, don’t be mislead. Yes, the concept of affiliate marketing is a good and workable one, but expecting to set one up and then being able to take a trip to the Aston Martin showroom in the next week is not very likely. You need SEO to optimise your site, put it in the search engine results and then keep it there. The two operations fit together, SEO is the key, affiliate marketing is the cash generator.

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