What is LinkShare... and do I really want to use it?

With the potential Internet offers, a merchant can cater his products to a wide audience, using one of the most effective, cheapest and fastest ways of marketing called affiliate marketing. With millions of people getting onto the internet everyday, it is a great way to promote merchandise.

If you are wearing yourself out slogging for 8 hours, for some one else, affiliate marketing could be answer. You can work out of your home, at your own flexibility and at times you choose, without having to answer to a boss, but by being answerable to yourself. In affiliate marketing, you benefit, as much as the merchant benefits. While you get a commission, for selling the products, the Merchant makes his money because his products are sold.

If you are interested in affiliate marketing, it’s advisable not to rush headlong, into something that you can find first. Start off by visiting sites, of various affiliate programs, affiliates or merchants themselves. Many programs are usually managed, by third party websites who act as an intermediary, between the affiliate and the merchant.

One of the popular third party affiliate website, is Linkshare, through which merchants and affiliates meet. Linkshare offers various affiliate marketing programs, for hundreds of merchants, in various kinds of businesses, products and services. With nearly 6000 plus affiliates in its rolls, it makes its revenues from setup fees, commissions and monthly account fees.

Linkshare provides a huge database of merchants, all of whom have various affiliate marketing programs. You can partner with any of them, who will match your needs. Where Linkshare scores, is the availability of a large number of options, for the affiliate. It is easy to compare, various affiliate schemes from various managers. Usually the Merchant waits for people to sign up, onto his program, but just being there gets him a lot of visibility.

It is the sheer convenience, which Link Share offers to affiliates, is what makes it different from others. Imagine find all the information, you need at a single place, that would save you a lot of time and money in searching for affiliate programs, comparing and then choosing them. Not only that, you can even track your merchants performance in terms of sales, commissions. All these will help you in making a decision, whether to continue in the program or not. If you have signed for multiple programs you get one single dash board, on which you can find all the statistics, you would need to assess your performance.

Not only that, you can even track the visitors and the click through and all the sales transactions. Even all your earnings can be monitored, from one dash board. Linkshare even takes care, of your commissions and sends it out to you once in a month.

For all this, all you have to do is go to their website and signup. It is a secure site and be assured, that the information you are getting is accurate. All this for free and you get access to a large number of affiliate programs.

Like all others, there is flip side to sites like LinkShare. The commissions you will get will be a bit lower, than those offered by the Merchant directly. This is so, because the merchant has to offset, the monthly costs that are involved.

If you are still wondering, if you need a network like Linkshare, think about the advantages it offers. Besides there are a lot of merchandisers, who offer their affiliate program, only through affiliate program networks and thus, you have no choice other than joining the network, to get into the affiliate marketing program or else you can opt for direct partnership with the merchant.

You can even do without sites like Linkshare, but on a overall count, the advantages overweigh the disadvantages.