Affiliate Marketing Not a Focus for University Marketing Degrees

Image by DavidErickson via FlickrAffiliate marketing, otherwise known as performance marketing, can generate large sums of money for website owners who take advantage of the opportunity to partner with various merchants. By placing links on your web site to merchants with whom you have a performance marketing relationship, you can obtain commissions and revenue which can substantially increase your profitability.

This Internet marketing technique has been expanding exponentially since its inception and continues to be a highly lucrative partnership for those who have the know-how and connections to make it happen. With online retail sales now representing about 10 percent of all retails sales in the United States, performance marketing is here to stay. It would seem that such a rapidly expanding sector of the marketing universe would be taught in every university marketing program, but it is not so. Very few marketing programs include affiliate marketing as a significant portion of their curriculum. Some site the rapidly changing web universe and the recent and rising influence of web communities on retail sales mechanisms as reasons for not including designated courses in this field.

If you aren't going to learn it in college, how does one learn the art of this type of online marketing? On-the-job training, web seminars, blogs, enrichment seminars and certification programs as well as how-to books and DVDs are just some of the materials and methods available to someone who is interested in becoming a web-savvy, well-paid marketer. Perhaps the richest source of information comes from industry experts. These individuals may offer seminars, appear at trade shows or write books offering to teach you what they know from their own experience. The fact that affiliate marketing is not being taught in most universities leaves a tremendous information gap for those who work in this field. Internet companies and retailers who utilize the web for sales must take the initiative to train or mentor their employees, often at a great expense.

What if you are trying to forge ahead on your own into the world of performance marketing? Perhaps you have seen the ads and read the testimonials touting the huge sums of money to be made with little or no effort. Like almost everything on the web, an individual's experience trying to educate him or herself on how to become successful at affiliate marketing is a lot like searching for a four leaf clover. Yes, they exist, but you will have to sift through a great deal of inconsequential stuff to find what you are really seeking. And in the end, as perhaps you may have suspected, you can't get something for nothing, and hard work is probably going to need to be your strong suit.

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