The Internet offers many ways to make money online. Affiliate marketing is one of them. An example of affiliate marketing is the Amazon product links that some people place on their website. If a third party clicks on an Amazon Associates link on your website and purchases a product, Amazon will pay you a percentage of the sale as a commission. Of course, depending on your site traffic, the product links and your conversion rate, your commission check can either be latte money or a whole lotta money. For people looking to enter into the affiliate marketing business, reading the CreditCards.com, Inc. Registration Statement offers a bit of inspiration. In 2007, CreditCards.com earned $63.3 million in revenues. Of course, it cost them about $31.1 million in sales and marketing to pull in those revenues.
The Risk Factors section also sheds some light into the affiliate marketing industry. Black hat SEO is one risk factor:
If our marketing practices violate search engine guidelines, we may, without warning, not appear in search result listings at all.
Also, CreditCards.com noted that it “spent approximately 90% of [its] total online advertising expenses in 2007 with Google and Yahoo!.” I think it’ll be 90% with Google within a year. Anyways, I’ve added CreditCards.com Inc. contracts to the site.