Judging by the feedback I’ve been getting, you guys don’t (or at least didn’t) know what Affiliate Marketing was. I thought I’d introduce the whole concept to you though and answer three particularly common questions that have come flying my way. For the intro, I have to give credit to the fabulous guys (and gals) at Wikipedia. They’ve summed up the whole business better than I could!

Affiliate Marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors and various types of affiliates/publishers who utilize a number of different methods to advertise the products and services of their merchant/advertiser partners.

Now the theory is out of the way… On with the Q&A!

Question - Do you need a big website to successfully use Affiliate Marketing?

Absolutely not! You don’t even NEED a website! There are so many ways you can reach an audience on the Internet (whether you choose video marketing on sites like YouTube or PayPerClick advertising on networks like AdWords) it’s reached a point where a website isn’t actually needed to earn an income online, and that’s what Affiliate Marketing is all about. Promoting other people’s products on other people’s websites!

Question - Do I need to have a big list to become a successful affiliate?

Let me tell you a secret… For the first five months as an Affiliate Marketer, I had NO list. NONE. Not even a single person. Building my list was initially slow (but once I knew how to build it I was getting opt-ins by the minute) and I didn’t see any profits at all. Why? I hadn’t built that vitally important relationship with my list. I was sending them the freebies to keep them on my newsletter, reading what I had to say, but they still didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was trying to achieve. You need to connect with your list. Tell them the odd funny story. Share an embarrassing secret or two. So my answer to that question? No. You don’t need a list to be a successful Super-Affiliate, though admittedly, without one, I wouldn’t be earning half of what I do earn today. You live and learn I guess.

Question – Fair enough. You’ve made your point. So where can I start building my list?

My advice would be to check out GetResponse, the auto-responder I use. Their deliverability rates are second to none, their support is fantastic with forums, e-mail support, live chat and a great phoneline all at the disposal of members to use as frequently (or infrequently, as the case may be) as they wish. I’ve never had any reason to really contact the GetResponse support seeing as they have some excellent Camtasia walkthroughs on hand to teach the basics – though it’s great to know that if you do run into an issue, someone is just on the other end of a phoneline.

For those of you who weren’t aware, I’m launching an Affiliate Marketing website which I’m due (or rather ‘hoping’) to launch on August 1st. Some aspects of the site are on track and others (drastically) lagging behind. We’ll see how things go. Affiliate Defined and it’s spiffy little dog blog.