Affiliate Marketing 101

It's incredible the number of people wanting to earn money online who just sign up for an affiliate marketing program and then wonder why they are not making any money. How many times do you need to h ear that there are no quick and easy ways to earn large sums of money on the internet? Sure you could sign up for one of these get paid to post forums and spend endless hours in front of your computer just to earn a measly $10 per month! I do believe that the real internet gold is in affiliate marketing.

There has been a great attraction to affiliate marketing as a way to earn money online since it was created, and this is because it is easier that selling directly or drop-shipping: with affiliate marketing you do not have to buy a product and then sell it, leaving you with a loss if you cannot sell your products; you do not have to handle products, you do not have to worry about after-sale services, you do not even have to handle the transaction between the provider and the buyer; affiliate marketing is a totally risk-free business.

The problem is that the majority of people think it is easy and it will make them rich after just a few days. Let me put you right here: I am not saying that you can't make money with affiliate marketing, I am just saying that if you join the right affiliate marketing program, if you are willing to work for your money and if you get the right advice, you can earn a handsome, steady income from it.

When I say the right affiliate marketing program, I mean that not all programs suit everyone. There are a lot of opportunities to choose from, and you must do some research before you launch yourself in your affiliate marketing venture. If you have a passion for a topic like psychology for example, you should go for a program that lets you sell books on psychology rather than a product than allows you to earn a bigger commission per item sold, but that you know little or nothing about.

 

Beware also of affiliate marketing programs that ask for a joining fee: there are a lot of free affiliate marketing programs out there, and I believe that a website that asks you to pay before signing up has no other design than taking its own members' money. I would be very dubious that anyone other than the website owners could make any money with these.

If you want to earn money from affiliate marketing, you do have to put in some effort. If you already own a website and get traffic to it, then your work is already cut out for you: you need to choose a product related to your website that you can write about; you can write a review praising the merits of your chosen product, place some advertisements on your website for it: the program you signed up for should provide you with a code containing your affiliate ID that will bring your website's visitors to the product's website when they click on that link, and if they decide to buy the product you will earn a commission.

If you do not have a website, you can either get one (nowadays there are tools that can easily let you set up a more than passable-looking website), set up a free blog or even a Squidoo lens on a topic you are passionate about and write reviews as I have described above. Keep in mind that you will need some time and effort to build up the necessary traffic that will allow you to make one sale; you will have to read up on SEO and traffic-building, be patient and not lose hope.

If you do not wish to choose a product to promote but still want to be an affiliate marketer with Clickbank, one of the most rewarding affiliate program online, you can get a Clickbank portal, which is a great tool: it is a free website that also comes with free hosting and that allows you to promote the 10000 products from Clickbank's marketplace; when you sign up you will automatically have your Clickbank affiliate ID inserted in the 10000 products of your portal so you don't even need to know anything about coding or websites, all you have to do is bring visitors to so that you can earn commission on whatever product they decide to buy.

 

One thing I strongly recommend to all would-be affiliate marketers is to write a few good quality articles about the product or products you are selling and submit those to online article directories; very few article directories allow you to include affiliate links in your articles and author's resource box but including your website's address would be very beneficial to your business, as people that may not otherwise visit your website may read your article and want to buy the product you are writing about. Writing articles and having them published in places outside your website will be a great help in earning money online from affiliate marketing as well as from your website's ordinary business: this will bring more traffic to it and this traffic will more than likely bring you buying customers for your affiliate products.

Writing Techniques

If you have website or a blog, you need to create contents that people find useful. If the content is valuable, other sites will link to your content and you will increase the number of back links to

your site. These back links will not only generate direct traffic from those sites, it will also help increase your search engine ranking and organic traffic.

So, what types of contents are baits for other sites to link to your sites? This article discusses seven types of contents that are proven to be magnets for back links. Try out a few of these techniques to increase your links and traffic.

1. Crete "How To" Guides. This type of guides is popular and also very useful to the readers Write down a few ideas related your niche and use authoritative websites to do your research.

Make it a step-by-step, preferably numbered like 1, 2, etc., guide. It should be as simple as a recipe but has enough details for some one to follow the steps to accomplish something.

2. Write controversial opinion on breaking news. Don't repeat the news. Big news organizations have hundreds of paid stuff for news reporting. You need to analyze the news and offer your own opinions. However, if the opinion is off main stream, it has better chance of attracting others attentions.

3. Videos are becoming ever popular on the web. Create a video related to your niche but make it funny. People love funny videos. You can use kids and pets to create funny video shots and than try to tie those shots to your niche. Upload to a few popular video sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Don't forget to put your website link in the video and embed the video in your website.

4. Keep a small inexpensive digital camera in you car all the time. When you come across funny things like, billboard and road signs, license plates, etc., take pictures and post it on your site and popular picture sharing sites like flickr, smugmug, etc.

5. Create a web tool related to your niche. Web tools like mortgage calculator, carbon foot print calculator, etc. are popular and useful. Ask your site visitors what type of tools they want to see on your site. Once you have the details of what the tool should do, go to elance, rent-a-coder, or online programmers and webmasters forums to solicit bids for developing the tool. You don't have to know any softwa re programming, but you have to know exactly what the tools should do.

6. Solicit ideas for contests from forums you visit regularly and start a contest on your site. Announce it in forums related to your niche. Give away free stuff at least worth $50 to the winner and token prizes to all finalists. Consider it as your advertisement spending. Run the contest for a month or so for the word to spread around. Encourage your visitors to spread the word.

7. Interview well-known personality in your niche and post the interview on your site. Write to bloggers in your niche about the interview. If the interviewee has some insightful thoughts, other bloggers will write about it and link to the original interview published in your site.

Bloggers use the seven content types described above for viral marketing and link baiting to increase traffic to their sites. If you are running a web site, not a blog, you can still employ these techniques to claim you share of the web traffic in your niche.