Affiliate Marketing In A Nutshell

As you pursue research in an effort to understand search engine optimization and Internet business more fully, one thing you may be left wondering is whether it is actually possible to make money online, or whether (as many people assume!) every "make money online" approach is nothing more than a scam.

The simple answer is as follows:

There are certainly "make money online" approaches that are nothing more than scams, but there are also plenty of legitimate - and lucrative - ways to make money online!

And outside of setting up a website that is specifically designed to promote your business, the best way to set up a website - and make it generate money for you - is to become an affiliate.

Affiliate marketing entails using your website to promote products from external websites - from whom you receive a percentage of the sale, each time a sale is made as a result of your website.

The best way to completely understand affiliate marketing is to look at an example:

One of the most popular affiliate websites is Amazon (its popularity as an affiliate site being due largely to the fact that it is such a popular site in general!). 

When you set up an affiliate account with Amazon, you can use your website to detail certain products, and as you detail a particular product, you can also link to it (using an affiliate link) directly. 

If anyone who visits your site clicks on this link and subsequently buys anything at all on Amazon, you will make 4% of whatever the person pays. This affiliate payout quickly escalates to 6%, and you will generate this money at all times of the day - regardless of whether you are at your computer or not - just by virtue of providing the link and sending people to Amazon through your site!

While Amazon is on the low end of payout percentage, it is also a website people recognize - and probably already have a buyer account on - which will make it likelier that they will pull the trigger on a purchase. 

However, there are websites on which you can make as much as 10% or 15% of each sale you create - and all you have to do is link to their products on your page!

Of course, there is more to making money as an affiliate than simply setting up a page and waiting for people to click on your links. After all, you need to get people to your page in the first place - which will require a thorough understanding of search engine optimization. 

But once you have a handful of affiliate accounts set up and an understanding of search engine optimization in hand, you will be ready to start building your website - and effortlessly making money on the Internet!

Why Google Apologized to Me?

Today I want to share a personal story with you.

As you may know, Google owns bglogspot.com which provides a free (and popular) blogging service.

Last December I was shocked to note that one of my top ranking blogs, how-to-make-cash-money.blogspot.com is disabled by Google.

Google simply disabled this once #1 Ranking site on how to make cash money with social media, without any communications to me.

That was devastating!  I have spent so much time and efforts on this blog, developing it into a Google top ranking site.

Suddenly, it's gone, without any warnings.

After logging into my blog account, I then realised Google's robots have mistakenly marked this blog as a spam blog.

I immediately lodged an online request on 31 December to have my blog restored.

Then the story gets very interesting...

As Google's web message asked for my patience, and promised to notify me the outcome.

I kept waiting for over two weeks.

No news.

Then I logged into my account again.  Google seems totally forgot the previous request, and asked me to request for restoring again.  Otherwise the site will be closed forever.

That's panicking!

Then I filled out the web form again.

Another two weeks were gone.  Still nothing in the email from Google, despite that I deliberately supplied a different email address for communications with Google.

Then I logged into again.  My god, Google forgot everything again, and asked me to fill out the web form again!  Otherwise the blog would be closed for good.

I have repeated this game with Google for at least 8 times!

Three months were gone and it seemed that I would never get my case heard!

Finally on 21 March, I received an email from Google:

"Unon further review, we have determined that your blog was mistakenly marked as a TOS violator by our automated system and, as such, we have reinstated your blog.

"We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused in the meantime and thank you for your patience as we completed our review process"

Thank God, after 3 months of repetitive request, I finally have my treasured blog reinstated!

So what are the morale of this story?

1. Stand up to appeal for any injustice which may be a result of unintentional consequence;
2. Be persistent.  If I gave up half way without repetitive requests, I would have lost this blog for ever.
3. A free service can be turned off any time by its provider.  

That's why I have started building my own web site www.social-media-in-marketing.com which can't be simply turned off by Google.

Moreover, I have gained so much knowledge and experience in building a professional blogging and e-commerce web site using Wordpress.  I shared some of my insights in this blog post:

How to build a professional e-commerce site for free

This Google incident forced me to devote so much time and efforts into exploring this new alternative...  

In the end, it's so satisfying and also gives me so much comfort to have another solid web presence owned by myself.

I will record some video tutorials on how to build your own professional look site soon.

Stay tuned!

Related Post: 

Create A Website – Part 1: step by step guide on getting domain names and web hosting