#1) Sales – When an affiliate leads a person to a website and the person purchases the product the affiliate gets a certain percentage of the purchase. This is the basis of affiliate marketing. However the affiliate does not receive a commission until someone purchases a product through their affiliate link.

#2) Leads – When an affiliate leads a person to a website and the person enters their information, either in the form of an email address or a phone number, the affiliate receives a commission. This method receives a higher number of commissions because the customer is not required to pay for anything. However the commissions received from leads is usually substantially smaller then commissions received through sales.

Either method will produce results. When implemented correctly an affiliate can receive hundreds or thousands of dollars every month by promoting products either through sales or leads. Some products want you to believe you can be making tens of thousands of dollars a week on autopilot. Unfortunately most of these products are wrong.

Affiliate marketing is only successful if you take action. If you expect to push a button once and make thousands of dollars in profit then you will fail like 90% of affiliate marketers do. However if you do put the effort in you will see the amazing income that can be generated through affiliate marketing.

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Mobile Marketing PlaybookIs this the Year of Mobile? For over a decade this proclamation has turned out to be premature, giving marketers ample reason to be skeptical. The difference looking forward to 2011 is that this is the first time that consumer behavior and mobile platforms have reached sufficient scale for mobile to move beyond an emerging media tactic for mainstream marketers.

To help guide marketers during this exciting time of transition, we’ve published the Mobile Marketing Playbook. Our comprehensive strategic report aims to help marketers evaluate the opportunities available, determine which ones are best for their brands and develop a strategy following best practices for achieving success in mobile marketing.

Specifically, the aim of the Mobile Marketing Playbook is to help marketers:
• Work within a framework for establishing a set of clear objectives for their mobile marketing strategy
• Move beyond the checklist approach with a filter for evaluating the myriad of opportunities within mobile
• Think of ways to use mobile to merge online and offline strategies, as a hub that bridges the gap
• Encourage a dialogue about what matters in mobile now, and what’s ahead for this new and exciting medium

In addition to leveraging the insights from members of the 360i mobile marketing team, the Playbook also includes guest commentary by industry luminaries Noah Elkin (Senior Analyst at eMarketer), Mickey Alam Khan (Editor in Chief at Mobile Marketer), Valerie Brown (Director of Consumer Marketing at Bravo) and Naoki Muramatsu (VP, Digital Business Development of Dentsu Holdings USA).