What is Affiliate Marketing ?
Affiliate marketing is one of the best and easy ways to earn money. This way of marketing deals with building up of references. It is the process of promoting products by other companies by recommending them to the consumers. You earn a commission if the consumers purchase the product based on your recommendation, for each sale you make. Physical products, information products and services can be promoted via affiliate marketing. Commission may vary accordingly. Basically, affiliate marketing works on the interrelationship between: the advertiser, publisher and the consumer.
Now the question arises that how can we initiate affiliate marketing by our own.
How to Start Affiliate Marketing ?
The foremost step to start up this business is ‘to be an affiliate’. This is the most important step. It involves the selection of the product or services which you want to recommend to the consumers, in order to make money. You can choose something which is in demand, or something you are interested and involved in. After finalising the product, you have to start by creating your website. This is important because the companies will require the URL of your website to ensure security. After setting up your website, next step is to find relevant affiliate programs which offers you products and services in your niche. You can use Amazon Affiliate Program, Commission junction etc. and finally, you have to join that affiliate program. In maximum cases it is free of cost and all you need is to provide your website URL to that company. 
The second step is to start the marketing on your website. All you have to do is to keep on putting and updating information about your product and add on the relevant affiliate links in your content. So that people looking for that particular product can click on that link and get redirected to the affiliate website. A good content always attracts visitors. So keep on updating and providing more precise affiliate links along with images and visual advertisements to make it more appealing. Also, companies provide links to their sites very easily giving you a room for easier access to everything. Sidebars can be effectively used for visual advertisements. When you are ready with the content, the next thing is to analyse the process and let things work. Once you get a good response for a particular product, add additional affiliate links to them. Trim the contents if necessary, only focus on what works and leave the rest. Through this you can get a complete review of your marketing.
The third and the final task of this marketing is to manage your work. The sole purpose of this marketing is to earn. When you start earning, you have to be prepared for the taxes also, in order to keep your business organized well. The partner companies will inform about the taxes in beginning of each year. Simultaneously, you have to keep on expanding your business by focusing on new products and looking up for new businesses. Promotion is very important for every business. Social media provides a great platform to promote and connect with consumers.
Organization is very important, once your business takes off, you can handover your tasks to others, this may require investment but this will open up new avenues for you in order to expand your affiliate marketing.