Affiliate marketing

When you’re starting from scratch online, then one of the quickest and easiest ways to grow your database is to create an affiliate marketing program.

If you already have a product or service in your niche, then it makes sense to seek out companies promoting similar goods, and propose two things:

1. A Joint Venture (JV) revenue-sharing agreement, whereby your JV partner promotes your product to their list, and you split the sales revenue whilst you receive the customer’s name and address details (allowing you to promote to them in the future).

2. An affiliate marketing agreement. Sometimes you can broker deals whereby an online marketer can act as your “agent”, proposing your product or service to many companies in your market niche on your behalf. If and when any of these companies do business with you, and it results in sales, your affiliate receives a small commission for each sale made.

This can become a highly lucrative occupation, especially for what are known as “super affiliates” who, rather than having any of their own products to sell, simply concentrate on building lists of buyers or potential JV partners with large databases, in order to cash in…