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Most of my blog posts so far have focused on helping business owners understand why a business blog can help grow their business online faster, cheaper, easier and better than using a traditional static business website.

In this post, I want to start discussing the benefits of using a blog, or blogging, to generate income online via affiliate marketing.

If you are new to the concept, Affiliate Marketing is simply a way of connecting buyers (people searching for something they need) with sellers (merchants) online. According to Wikipedia, Affiliate Marketing is a performance-based marketing channel on the Internet where a merchant pays a commission to an affiliate for generating clicks, leads, or sales from a graphic or text link located on the affiliate’s site.

For example, I own an online Audio Book store called AudioBookOne.net. If you own a web site and want to promote audio books related to your web site’s topics, then you can become an affiliate partner, which allows you to place specially encoded links and banners on your web pages. When visitors click on these links, they are sent directly either to the main audio book online store, where they can browse thousands of best-selling audio book titles on a wide range of topics, or to a specific page containing more information about a particular audio book title or category. As the referrer, you then automatically earn sales commissions on all purchases of audio books made by your site(s) visitors who clicked on your affiliate links.

Affiliate marketing is a great, low-cost and fast way to start generating an income or additional business revenue online, as you don’t have to carry any of the inventory, or provide any customer service – the merchant is responsible for this. There are literally hundreds of thousands of physical and digital products and services that you can promote as an affiliate marketer. Although it sounds simple and easy (and if you know what you’re doing it is!), affiliate marketing does require some “how to” knowledge in order to be successful and turn your efforts into a profitable investment of your time.

One of the best resources for anyone interested in learning more about how to succeed with affiliate marketing, is “The Super Affiliate Handbook” by Rosalind Gardner. Rosalind shows you how she created a $500,000+ annual income using affiliate marketing and teaches you how to create a foundation for a similarly profitable business. Continue Reading »