• Unattached affiliate marketing
• Related affiliate marketing
• Involved affiliate marketing

• In my November 2009 Report, you may have noticed that my affiliate income had surpassed my direct income from the electronic products that I sell online.
• I received a lot of comments, asking me to explain more about where my affiliate income comes from and how it works.
• Instead of just breaking down where it all came from-how much this and how much that-I decided to turn this post into something a little bit more useful that would do more than just tell you how much I earned. Again, I'm not here to show you the money I make online, I'm here to show you how I make money online, and what I've learned along the way.
• When thinking specifically about affiliate income, I determined that I could divide how people earn money as an affiliate into three primary categories: Unattached, Related, and Involved.
• These terms represent how we are associated with the product or products we may be an affiliate for.

• These are your basic pay-per-click affiliate marketing campaigns where you have no presence and no authority in the role of the product you're promoting.
• There's no connection between you and the end consumer, and all you're doing is putting an affiliate link in front of someone via Google Adwords, Facebook ads, etc. in the hopes that they'll click on your link, buy the product, and earn a commission.
• The reason why this type of affiliate marketing is so attractive to many is because no presence or authority is needed! It takes time to build up a reputation and trust with certain groups of people online, and many people are just too scared to commit to working on a blog or website, or just don't have the time. For many, this is their only option.

• In fact, in early 2009 I tried something similar once.
• I signed up for an affiliate network and found thousands of potential products I could promote. I choose one and spent about $250 dollars on Adwords hoping someone would click on the link and I'd get paid. If you dabble in PPC affiliate marketing and it's working for you in a way that you’re instilling trust in your audience, I glad you and wish you continued success. It's a lot more difficult than it sounds, so props to those of you finding success with it.

• Another form of affiliate marketing is what I like to call Related Affiliate Marketing. This is where you have some sort of presence online, whether it's through a blog, a podcast, videos, or on social media and you have affiliate links to products related to your position, but they're for products you don't actually use.
• Back when text link ads were a big deal, I remember seeing every single “make money online” website with a 125 x 125 pixel advertisement for Text Link Ads, which was an older advertising model where you could have advertisers pay for having specific terms on your website become links to their products.
• This was big in the blogosphere when I was just starting out. Most of these sites did not actually use the text link ad service on their own sites. On many personal finance blogs, you'll see a lot of different affiliate advertisements for things like ING, Everbank, LendingClub, and numerous other financial institutions.

I doubt that every person who places one of those links on their blog actually uses each of those products and services. And that's okay. Placing affiliate links on your site that are related to your niche is a decent strategy to earn extra income. Whether it's in the sidebar in banner form, or in a text link at the bottom of your blog post, because you have a website and some authority, people will trust you and your decision to place the ad on your site.

In my early days, I used to have a few of these links scattered throughout SPI-for example, an ad for a “How to Make an iPhone App” product. I used to have a few iPhone apps that generated an income for me each month, but I didn’t actually use the product I was linking to. I did, however, personally know the owner, which is why I trusted him and decided to place that ad there at the time. Nowadays though, I don’t like to promote anything I haven’t tried and loved myself. How can I honestly say that I support a product if I don’t know everything there is to know about it ? If you don't promote the right products, even if you know the owner or think it might be a great fit, you run the risk of losing the trust you have built with your audience. It takes hard work to build authority and trust, and one bad affiliate offer could potentially collapse that, so be sure you trust the product you're recommending, and the team behind the product to take care of your people.

• Involved affiliate marketing is where you've used a product or service, truly believe in it, and personally recommend it to your audience.
• Not in a banner ad or somewhere that says “recommended resources,” but within your content, as part of your life and strategy for whatever it is you're talking about.
• The product almost becomes something people “have to have,” because it's part of the process.