About a year ago I was talking to my friend about how I needed an email auto-responder, and he told me about a product he was using called AWeber. It sounded like just what I needed, so he sent me an email with a link to AWeber.

I checked out their website, but I wasn’t ready to sign up right then. Sometime later, I was ready to get started, so I typed aweber.com in my browser’s address bar, went to the site, and signed up.

I told my friend I was using AWeber, and he asked me if I signed up using the link he gave me. Of course not! If I knew the URL was aweber.com, why would I dig up his email to find the link instead of just typing it in?

And then I realized what I had done. This must have been one of those affiliate deals I had heard about. D’oh!

I didn’t know it at the time, but if I had signed up through the link he gave me, he would have earned a commission for referring me. He said “That’s why I gave you the link!” But I thought it was his fault for not explicitly telling me I had to sign up through the link, and why.

Now it’s a year later and I know a lot more about affiliate programs, but I figure there are still people out there who don’t. Here are the basics you need to know.

What is an affiliate program?

An affiliate program is a distribution method that some companies use to sell their products. People sign up to be affiliates, and they can then earn commissions for selling the company’s products. Affiliates are usually customers who have bought the products themselves, but not always. They usually promote the products by writing reviews of them and posting affiliate links on their blog.

What does an affiliate link look like?

A link normally looks like this:

http://www.company.com

But an affiliate link will look something like this:

http://www.company.com?ref=1234

or http://www.company.com?id=bobsmith

or http://bobsmith.company.com

The username bobsmith and the referrer id 1234 identify the affiliate so they can be credited. If you buy a product through this link, the affiliate receives a commission. If you buy a product through http://www.company.com, no affiliate receives a commission because there’s no way to know how you found out about the product.

An affiliate link can appear as a text link or an image link. With your mouse pointer over the link, look at the lower left corner of your browser to see the URL. Note that clicking on a link like http://www.company.com?ref=1234 may redirect you to http://www.company.com, with the referrer id of 1234 being stored behind the scenes.

How does this help the company?

If a product costs $20, and you buy the product through an affiliate, $4 of that $20 might go to the affiliate as a referral fee, with the company keeping the remaining $16. The exact amount can vary widely depending on the product, but the point is that part of the sale goes to the affiliate for their efforts in promoting the product. The company has to give up some of the revenue, but the advantage for them is that they make a sale to someone who otherwise might never have heard of the product.

How does this help the affiliate?

The affiliate gets a commission for each sale they make. They may promote a product passively, by putting up a banner ad for people to click on. Or they may promote a product more actively, by writing a review. They want their reviews to be persuasive so that people will buy the product, but good affiliates know that they will hurt their reputation by writing inaccurate or misleading reviews.

How does this help the customer?

A customer can buy a product through an affiliate, and if they like it, they may sign up to become an affiliate themselves. In this way they can make some money to pay for part of their purchase, or possibly earn a good profit in time.

But let’s consider the customer who doesn’t become an affiliate. They don’t receive any financial benefit from buying through an affiliate, although it doesn’t cost them anything either. The benefit to them is that they found out about a product they might not have heard of before, and they read a review that helped them make an informed decision as to whether they wanted to buy it.

Buying from an affiliate is a painless way to “share the love” with the person who told you about a product, instead of all the profits going to the company, who might not care about every last dollar if they’re making billions.

How does a customer know if they can trust an affiliate’s review?

If you visit a company’s website and read about their products, do you think they’re going to say their products are great or terrible? Obviously, they want to give glowing reviews to make their products sound as good as possible. It’s the only way they can make money.

If you read a product review written by an affiliate, it’s very different. An affiliate is a “real person,” not a company. They’ll share their experiences, letting you see the product from a different angle. They might highlight certain ways the product has helped them that you might not have thought of. And they’re much more likely to point out any downsides to the product. Although pointing out downsides might make people less likely to buy, it also makes the affiliate’s reviews more credible, which will help them in the future.

My reviews

I’m going to post a product review shortly, so you can see an example. The way to look at it is not to automatically think “Hunter says this is good, so I should buy it.” No one is going to agree with me about everything. If you read enough of my posts, you’ll get an idea for where our opinions are similar and where they differ, and this will help you interpret my reviews. I won’t just say that a product is good, but I’ll try to explain why it’s good, giving you enough detail to make a decision based on whether you’ve agreed with similar opinions I’ve had.

Some affiliates will disclose all their affiliate links by following every one with “(affiliate).” The idea is that they’re warning people that they’re biased because they stand to profit from your purchase. I don’t think that’s necessary. I think every blogger is putting their reputation on the line with everything they say, whether they’re making money or not. Being an affiliate is nothing to apologize for.

So far, I have disclosed all my affiliate links, though there haven’t been many. The reason is not to warn you that I’m biased, but to warn you not to do what I did in the story above and buy the product without using the affiliate link. However, I think it’s going to become very tedious to disclose every affiliate link. Since I seem to be mentioning a lot of books and movies anyway, I figure that I might as well become an Amazon affiliate so I can sell them. Wouldn’t it be annoying to see “(affiliate)” everywhere, including in photo credits? Yeah, I think so too. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but maybe I’ll disclose affiliate links on the Resources page, but not in posts.

Anyway, if you ever buy a product based on my recommendation, I ask that you use my affiliate link, if I have one. Then if you want to, become an affiliate yourself and repeat the process.

• Affiliate Masters Course Review