Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.

Affiliate marketing is an ideal home business because it doesn't require much money to get started, and you don't have produce, stock or ship product inventory, or deliver a service.You're essentially paid for referring new clients and customers to other businesses.

Advantage and disadvantage of Affiliate Marketing

advantage of Affiliate Marketing

Low cost to get started. Most affiliate programs are free to join, so your costs are usually related to your referral/marketing methods.

No need to create a product or service.
Don't have to stock or ship products.
Work anytime and from anywhere as long as you have Internet access.
Passive income potential, depending on how you market your affiliates programs.
Can be added on to current home business to create an additional income stream.It's ideal for bloggers, coaches, information entrepreneurs, and anyone who has a website.

disadvantage of Affiliate Marketing

It can take time to generate the amount of traffic needed to result in income.
Affiliate hijacking can occur in which you're not given credit for your referral. URL masking can help.
A bad affiliate can ruin your credibility. It's important that you choose quality businesses to work with to avoid this.
No control over the businesses product, service, or how it does business.
Some companies have been known not to pay, although there are ways to screen and choose quality affiliate programs.
High competition. When you find a great program, you can bet that many others are promoting it as well.
Customer belongs to the merchant.Your stats will let you know how many sales where made of what product, but in most cases, you'll have no information about who made the purchase, which makes it difficult to market for re-sales.