Before you really dive in and start your affiliate marketing business, you first need to know how it all works. A lot of people simply read reviews about how much money one can potentially make with marketing, and they instantly begin trying the system. If you don’t know what it’s about, however, you’re going to fail at it.

Affiliate marketing is simple enough to understand. You only have to take a few minutes to get your head around it. With affiliate marketing, you will seek out a program that some company is offering, wherein you drive traffic and sales for the products they own. Each time you refer a customer and they purchase a product (or sign up for something, etc), you will receive a sales commission. You’re basically an intermediary for someone’s product.

When you become an affiliate marketer, the merchant is the company you’re working for. The merchant is the individual or the business responsible for actually selling and shipping the product. The merchant is going to have different links and codes and other tools and materials available for you to use.

The affiliate network is a little harder to explain, as it can mean multiple things. To put it simply, however, the network in affiliate marketing can be described more by calling it the medium. It’s the way that you (the publisher) reach out to the customers and the way you ultimately deal with the company responsible for the products (the merchant).

The publisher in affiliate marketing is you. As the publisher, you will be responsible for posting (and perhaps creating) different advertising materials, websites, etc. You will receive referral links and codes and other materials from the merchants, but as the publisher, you’re wholly responsible for displaying this content and for driving customers to purchase the products.

The customer in affiliate marketing is self explanatory. This is the person viewing your materials and ultimately purchasing the product. However, you need to realize that customers have to be incredibly niche-specific. You need to target a certain type of customer, not just any customer.

As you learn about the different aspects of affiliate marketing, you can begin to see how it all fits together. The publisher will hook up with a merchant and receive the necessary materials. The publisher then uses the network to create a larger network and to ultimately drive sales by attracting the right customers. It’s a fluid, working system once set up correctly, all fitting together perfectly.

Whether or not affiliate marketing is right for you and your particular business is something only you can answer. You are still operating a legitimate business when you work as an affiliate for another company. The only difference is that you’re selling a product that doesn’t belong to you. It can be quite lucrative, and it’s something you may want to think about long and hard.

A few good tips and some information to explain affiliate marketing in detail is all most people need before deciding to go ahead with it. You really have little to lose in the long run. Affiliate marketing is a low-cost way to start a successful business.