How Affiliate Marketing Works For Bloggers – Passive Income Article

You’ll have a much better understanding of how affiliate marketing works once I answer a few primer questions that’ll tell you what it is, why you should try it and when to get started. Let’s dive in…

What is Affiliate Marketing?

I like to define affiliate marketing as a partnership between a publisher (i.e. blogger) and a merchant (i.e. retailer). The merchant sells products online and the publisher creates content online.

When they partner up, the publisher joins the merchant’s affiliate program (either hosted on a pro affiliate network or self-hosted tracking platform) and upon approval, logs into a dashboard to get things like promotional materials, performance reports, and most importantly, their unique affiliate tracking links.

The publisher then places these links within their content, like in a blog post or linked to a banner. Anytime one of their visitors clicks on a link and makes a purchase at the merchant’s site, the publisher earns a…