Affiliate Marketing. Iv’e heard this word tossed around all year, but never really delved into it that much. It was only last week when writing my previous article about student laptop deals that I found myself wondering why I was sending my hard-earned traffic to another site with nothing to show, I mean, not even a friendly thank you! This, coupled with a wise word from my old manager, was enough to get my heart racing and mind into gear. “What is Affiliate marketing?” I asked myself, “and how can I use it with MY website?”.

I started by heading over to AffiliateWindow, a site all about affiliate marketing. Here it described how I could be making money online, quickly, simply and with relatively little effort. Now, to make big bucks everyone knows you need to do more than sit back and watch the money roll in (unless your Google!), but I was after a relatively small amount! It is a small venture, but a venture none-the-less!

After paying £5.00 to AffiliateWindow which has now been credited back into my bank, I started linking to merchants. Let’s go back a step to stage one for a minute: Affiliate Marketing is, in essence, using other websites (affiliates) to send traffic (customers) to eCommerce websites (merchants). If you do this and it results in a sale, you get a commission of the sale (usually about 2% – 10%). The customers can often get special discounts too. Everyone’s a winner!

There are other methods of doing Affiliate Marketing (using banners, discount codes etc) but I think this is the most popular method. It means JohnAlexanderRowley.com is officially classed as a ‘content website’ aka A website that reviews and discussed items that it is affiliated with.

Anyway, I’m already affiliated with PC World, Laptop Direct, Play, Maplin and LoveFilm – and there is more to come! Check out some of my articles which make use of this handy money making tip!