What is Affiliate Marketing? – Programs You Can Join for Free

Before we tackle what Affiliate Marketing is – let's look at the word “affiliate” – which goes back to Middle French affilier – “to bring into close connection” the origin is from medieval Latin affīliāre, “to adopt as a son”

As an affiliate, you get commissions for any sales you send a company.  Sometimes it's one time sales, sometimes it is a membership and therefore you build residual income.

Does a company adopt us?

In a way, yes.  But don't think for a minute you are not replaceable.

I have seen affiliate companies and affiliate networks kick an affiliate to the side quickly if they think they are violating agreements, rules, ethics or the law. As long as you are an honest person – being taught the right way to market on the Internet, you should be good.

As a matter of fact, companies and affiliate programs don't have to accept you as an affiliate – it's their company and they can work with – or not work with anyone they want!

If you get a denial for something you wanted to be an affiliate for, apply to be an affiliate for something else…there are many hundreds of thousands of companies looking for affiliate marketers to sell their product!

• improve your website
• add content
• build up your traffic
• increase your sales with other affiliates
• build your email list
• …re-apply for that one affiliate program that denied you before!

Companies all have different requirements and acceptance rates.

Is Affiliate Marketing Ethical?

If something helps you, you would recommend it to other people whether you make a commission or not, wouldn't you?

You are doing people a service by recommending something that works!

And that is why you deserve to get paid.  For service.

Help and you will be helped.

What do you  know about that can help other people?

Give that away and you will be rewarded.

If there was a way you could get a commission when you recommend the things you use anyway – would you want to take advantage of that?

How to Get Paid for Recommending Things

No.  This is not MLM.

I think people were so scarred by AMWAY that they run screaming any time they hear Network Marketing or MLM.

Or worse yet – see those circles and hear “you tell 5 people and they tell 5 people…”

As I said before, this is not MLM – it is Internet marketing – also known as affiliate marketing.

You build a website – and make it an authority in your niche.  And you write for keywords that people are searching for.  How do you know what people are searching for?  You use free keyword search tools.

As an “affiliate” we choose to recommend a product and we get paid if someone buys because of our recommendation.

Nobody tells me what products to represent.  I run my own business and I stand behind every product I represent as being the best I know of at the time of my recommending that product.  If it wasn't the best product I knew of, I would not be using it and I would darn sure not be recommending it.  PERIOD. I would never recommend something to make any amount of money.

I believe in Karma and the Golden Rule – so I'm pretty careful I am not compromising who I am or what I believe in to make a sale and I would hope everyone else is like that too.

There have been a few times I was recommending something I believed in and that company took a turn for the worse and I moved on. Those companies did fine without me.  And I am better off without them.

We live, we learn and when we know better we do better.

Affiliate marketers work for ourselves.  We are not an employee of any company.

The companies are lucky to have affiliate marketers.  It saves them a big advertising budget when someone recommends their product for free.  They just pay a portion of a sale they would not have had without the recommendation.  Everybody is happy.

We can stop representing a company if they do something we feel is unethical and they can stop letting us be an affiliate for them if they think we did something unethical.

That's okay to decide to stop doing business with a company when you have multiple streams of income.  You don't worry about one check not coming when there are other payments, other websites, and other advertising plans you can ramp up to make up the difference.

How Affiliate Marketers Get Paid

IMO – legit affiliate programs pay real money – not in credits, points or crypto-currency.

I have to pay my bills in dollars as I am sure you do too.

Most common ways I get paid:

• checks in the mail
• direct deposit – goes right into the bank
• PayPal payments – this can be transferred to the bank

Once in a while I have been paid by other sources – once I got a Western Union – that was cool. 🙂  I got an email notice that there was money waiting for me – I went to the nearest Western Union and I picked up cash.

Some affiliate marketers get paid very well, some never get paid.  That's the honest truth.

It's not because affiliate marketing is a scam and it doesn't work – it's because most people don't work and that's not the fault of any company, training program or any Internet marketing tool.

When someone makes a decision to make their online business work and use affiliate marketing to monetize their business – and they learn the skills necessary to be successful online – and they decide they won't quit until they are successful – that's when you will see them succeed.

Some people just stick their big toe in.

They never make a commitment to making their business work – no matter what happens.  If you bought a million dollar franchise, you'd put some work into it until it showed a profit, wouldn't you?

Just because you have a very low investment to get started in Affiliate Marketing doesn't mean you should make light of the opportunity.

I know people in this business who make insane amounts of money.

I do alright myself – but I am not in “guru” category.  I am a regular gal – who wants to help other regular people to pay their bills without having to work for someone else.

I've been doing affiliate marketing for a lot of years.

I see so many people struggling to pay bills, hating their job and living to pay bills and die.

Not only that, but there are so many people who are sick from whatever – and they can't work a regular job.

So many people need to learn affiliate marketing – I was so glad I found a program that was free to try and fairly inexpensive to join for a year.

Let's say you make a commitment – you are going to give Internet marketing one year.  That's it.

Even if you said – “If it doesn't “work” in one year, you are going to quit.”

I built this website in one week.  And today it is one month old. (the website you are on now!)

Imagine where FreeTrainingWorkFromHome.com will be in one year?

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Ways to find Affiliate Programs

You Can Join For Free:

• affiliate link on the company/product website (usually at the bottom)
• Search engine with “company/product name” and the word affiliate – try searching with and without quotes, different search engines may have different results.
• Affiliate networks

If someone is asking you to pay to promote their company or product, don't.  It's a scam.

You should not have to pay a monthly fee to sell something. There are plenty of legitimate companies out there who are eager to have you become an affiliate for them and they pay you!

How to Build Your Affiliate Marketing Business

I have built dozens, maybe even hundreds of websites over the years.

Some winners, some losers. All of them taught me a lesson.
And I am still learning.

I have a handful of sites that are still working for me while I work on this site.  That's the beauty of building a website – if you build it with a solid foundation – it will continue to work for you – and if you do it right – you will continue to get paid.

A long time ago, I started thinking of my business like a plate juggler.

I get a website going – and then I can move on to another one – but I might need to come back to the first website and spin it.  I'll be teaching lots of things to keep your plates spinning.

For now, lets just get one “plate” going.

If you have never built a website before but you have always dreamed of having a business – why not start for free today and see if it's for you?