In this lesson, we're going to cover a very basic topic:

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Chances are you already have an idea of what affiliate marketing is. 

But in this lesson, we'll give you the full explanation, then take a look at a real affiliate website that does really well - just to give you an idea of how everything works. 

Part 1: What Does an Affiliate Marketer Do?

As an affiliate marketer, you are an independent salesperson. 

You're going to be connecting people who want to buy products and services with companies selling those products and services. And when you do this, you'll get a commission for the sale! 

There are thousands of affiliate programs out there. Some of the largest companies have them, such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, eBay, and more! 

Most of the affiliates that we work with are smaller companies - some of which you may not have heard of. 

Later in the course, we'll show you exactly who we work with and which industries we're in. 

But for now, let's show you what an actual affiliate marketing site looks like. 

Part 2: What an Affiliate Website Looks Like

For this example, we'll take a look at DogFoodAdvisor.com - a big affiliate website that specializes in dog food reviews.

This website has a lot of pages, but the one we want to look at is their A-Z reviews page. Here you can see that they have a LOT of reviews.

Now let's take a look at one of these reviews, the Blue Buffalo. 

In this post, DogFoodAdvisor gives a star rating.

Goes into the nutrition facts of this dog food.

And just overall gives a lot of VERY helpful information about this brand of dog food. These will really help people make an informed decision on whether or not they should purchase this brand of dog food or not.  

Now one VERY important part of this post is the links DFA (dogfoodadvisor) puts. These links lead the reader to a website, where he or she can purchase the dog food DFA was reviewing.

But more than that, these are actually affiliate links. If you click on the link and have a look at the url, you can easily spot this:

This means that whenever someone clicks the links DFA has on their website, and purchases a product, DFA will get a commission for it. 

Part 3: How Most Affiliate Marketers Get Traffic

If we type "Dog Food Reviews" on Google, the first website that shows up is Dog Food Advisor.

The same is true if we type "Best Dog Food" DFA is still one of the sites to show up. 

This means that DogFoodAdvisor is getting a LOT of free visitors from search engines like Google.

And that's one of the main goals of affiliate marketing - to get to the top of Google. 

We want that when someone types in something related to our niche, our website will be the first one to show up. 

There are a lot of factors that go into which pages show up first in Google (we'll have a deep dive into these later in the course), but probably the most important one is this:

Create helpful information for your readers! 

Just like DogFoodAdvisor, the best way to get free traffic is by writing guides that are actually helpful for people to read! 

Conclusion

In short, being an affiliate marketer is like being your own boss. 

You're an independent contractor, you're a salesperson, and you get to choose who you work with (with LOTS of choices, no matter which niche you choose). 

In the end, there's really all there is to it. 

You provide great information for readers, then you show up on Google for reviews, top 10 listicles, and all the things that people are potentially searching up. 

Then if you can rank in Google for these searches, you can send your readers out to your partner companies, and earn commissions for any purchases these readers make! 

Your job is very simple. 

Help people make informed purchases. 

When we can help companies close the sale, they will reward you. 

And that's exactly what we're going to teach you throughout this course! 

End of Lesson 1.

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