What is affiliate marketing?Affiliate marketing is a way of making money online. At its most simple, a shop (lets say Amazon) will let you sign up to its affiliate programme. If you have a website and use the special links they provide, you will earn a commission of any sales that visitors using your links purchase. You might get a commission of something like 2% from Amazon but if you promote other products (lets say, online gambling or dating) then your commission could be much higher, 75% maybe. You don't need to run your own site, you don't need credit card facilities you don't need to deal with customers you just need to be able to market effectively. |
UK affiliate networksRather than have an in-house affiliate service, lots of sites outsource their affiliate marketing to an affiliate network. If you sign up with an affiliate network you'll be able to browse through hundreds of sites that let you promote them. Listed below you'll find some of the major UK affiliate networks. |
Recommended affiliate blogsShoemoney.com: Jeremy Shomaker writes from his heart about affiliate marketing, online marketing and his life. He's built a large following. There is a good mix of useful info, tools, insight and gossip. Kirsty's affiliate marketing blog: Kirsty is doing so well out of affiliate marketing she has moved with her partner from the UK to Queensland, Australia! She includes a good mix of practical tips and living the affiliate life. Kieron's here.org.uk affiliate blog: Kieron is well known in the UK affiliate marketing scene. Keiron is famous for posting one of his bank statements to an online forum showing that he made around £82,000 in one month from his affiliate marketing work. Other useful resourcesA4uforums: The A4uforums are the spiritual home of affiliate marketing in the UK! They are a busy bunch of forums dedicated to uk affiliate marketeers and have been around for ages! |
If you have any useful UK affiliate sites/tips, email tips (@) affiliate.co.uk. Also on Twitter too as affiliateuk. Other useful toolsGoogle trends for websites: Track traffic to websites over time. See how other sites are doing :) Here's a graph of visitors to facebook.com vs myspace.com in the UK, for example (gotta feel sorry for MySpace there!). Google Insights for Search: Track search term trends. Super useful tool to see how popular keywords are. Here's a graph of "affiliate marketing" vs "online marketing" search terms |