Affiliate Marketing Costs

Does it cost anything to become an affiliate marketer?

Generally speaking, there are no startup costs required with affiliate marketing.  There may be costs depending on how you decide to promote the affiliate products such as advertising costs, or additional web hosting costs.  Advertising is optional and if you already have a web hosting plan or plan to promote from an existing website, there should be no other costs.  In reality, you don’t even need a website but we’ll talk about that in the next article in the Article Marketing series. 

Once you figure out how you will promote products, then you simply find products you’d like to promote and sign up for their affiliate program by filling out a short form.  Each affiliate asks for different information, but generally speaking all affiliate programs will ask for the following information.

• First Name
• Last Name
• Email Address
• Login Information including login name and password (if they aren’t automatically generated)
• You PayPal email address (so they can send your commissions)
• Your Mailing Address (especially important if you are receiving your commission payments via check)
• Social Security Number or Tax ID Number

Don’t be scared because they ask for your social security number.  If you live in the United States and make over $600 in any given year in commissions, the affiliate program is required by the IRS to send you a Form 1099 for tax reporting purposes.  This is why they need your social security number or tax ID. 

I have found that if a company needs to send you a Form 1099 and you don’t provide your Tax ID or Social Security number at sign up; they get it from you when the time comes.  Many times this is a required field so there may not be a way around it.  They can alternatively ask you to fill out a form W9, which is an IRS form and is completely legal. That being said it is up to you whether you feel comfortable giving them your information at sign up or waiting until the IRS requires it.

Just remember, affiliate income is taxable income so be sure you are reporting it to the IRS.  I believe you even need to do it if the amount is under $600.  Tax advice is definitely out of the scope for this article so I suggest you consult a tax person or you can visit the IRS website and research information regarding self employment income for more information.

At the beginning of this answer I talked about some of the additional costs that may be associated with affiliate marketing depending on how you choose to promote the offers.  While the details of these types of promotions are also out of the scope of this article, I just wanted to provide a list of the some of the items that may incur costs.

• Purchasing a website specifically for promotion of a program

• Buying the actual product or service in order to get a better idea of how it works, what the customer service is like, etc.

• Paying for options such as taking out newspaper ads, Google Ads, or other forms of advertising for the product beyond things you may already possess

Again, these are extra costs that you choose whether or not to incur.  They are not required to be an affiliate marketer by any means.  There are plenty of free ways to promote products.  You can write reviews and submit them to article directories or post comments in forums or blogs with a link to the product (don’t spam though) to name a couple.  Be very careful when posting comments to forums or blogs.  Make sure the product you are promoting is relevant and that the topic calls for a product recommendation.

I’ll talk more about how to promote products in a future article in the Affiliate Marketing series.

Good Luck!