May 7th, 2008

The Affiliate Marketing Business - Learn The Basics


So many articles, forums, and blogs focus on the advanced techniques of affiliate marketing, they tend to forget that there still are some who need to learn the basics. Affiliate marketing is an excellent way for people to start earning money online, especially when they do not have there own products to sell. They hear about affiliate marketing and probably read plenty of sales pages that promise them overnight success, but how many of these pages focus on the basics. These people want to find out how to get started, while others are trying to sell them information on advanced methods of viral marketing, creating opt-in lists, and discovering niches.

Every once and a while it’s good to take a step back and go over the basics again. This kind of information is freely available all over the internet, thus it is not profitable to many people, so they do not even talk about it. The problem is that if you type “affiliate marketing” into a search engine the only basic information that you can find probably comes from a “Wiki” page. Everyone else is trying to sell you products that they swear will turn your $800/month income into $10,000/month. Believe it or not, there are plenty of people out there who would be ecstatic to earn an extra $800 a month.

The basic principle is to find a “niche” or similar group of products and companies that you want to build your affiliate marketing around. There are endless numbers of niches, and it’s best to choose one that you are familiar with. If you are still stumped, go ahead and sign up with a couple of affiliate sites, like ClickBank, PayDotCom, and/or Commission Junction. There you can look through what they have to offer and then you can get a couple ideas on what you want to focus on. But beware some niches may be overloaded with other affiliates, and the competition can get fierce. If you do a little research on Google or some of the affiliate marketing forums, you can get some idea on what is profitable and what is not. What ever you do, do not rely on other marketers who are trying to sell you their product. Their sales pages can be very convincing, but remember, they are trying to sell you something, so their opinions will be biased. It’s best to do your own research and make your own educated decisions. Once you get deeper into the game, then you may choose to go with the products that these marketers are pushing. Some of them are genuinely good products that can help you in the long run, but when you are starting out this kind of information will be more advanced or complicated than you will need.

Once you find one or two niches that you want to focus on, then you will want to work on getting a website together. It’s important to take it slow in the beginning. You’ll find that pushing one or two products will be more profitable than the “shotgun approach”. If you choose to work with too many products, then your focus will be too spread out and before you know it, things will start to fall apart. Everything you put together from here on out needs to revolve around your niche. This includes your domain name, your website, and your advertising.

The rest of the steps can usually be taken care of fairly easily, if you find yourself a good web host. They will help you find an available domain name, and will usually register it free of charge if you decide to go with their hosting services. It’s important that your domain name describes your niche. For example, if you choose to work with “diet products”, then your domain name should include the word “diet” in some capacity. Think about it, your not going to get as much credibility if your “diet site” has a domain name like “BigJohnsWebsite.com” as it would with a domain name like “TheDietReport.com”. Once your satisfied with the domain name and have secured some web hosting services, then it’s time to move onto the website itself.

A lot of people aren’t so keen on the idea of building their own website. What they need to realize that you do not need to be an experts in HTML anymore to build a nice, professional looking website. Sure there are still professionals that mix in flash and javascript that can turn a website into an “experience”, but that is not necessary for an affiliate. The website does not have to be flashy. It just needs to be functional, informative, and most importantly, convincing. The whole idea behind affiliate marketing is to turn their visitors into consumers. If you can convince the visitor that they need that product right now, and can get them to buy it through your affiliate links then you, in turn, will receive the commission. There are all kinds of software out there (i.e. MS FrontPage) that make building a website a cinch. If you know how to use a word processor, then you can create a website. The most important thing is to pay special attention to is your affiliate links. If you do not have those incorporated into your web page correctly then you could end up losing out on the commission. But even that is easy these days because affiliate programs will provide you with the exact links and all you need to do is copy and paste. But for God’s sake, test your links when you get your website up. It only takes a few minutes and it can save you a lot of heartache later on. Once you are satisfied with your web page follow the web host’s instructions on how to upload your site, and in no time you should be up and running.

If that is all it took to be successful in affiliate marketing, then we would all be millionaires by now. Unfortunately, the toughest part has yet to come. You need to start working vigilantly on driving traffic to your website. And not just random traffic, but targeted traffic who are actually looking for the products that you are marketing. There are a couple of ways to do this, and many argue on what is the most successful. You can buy traffic, in other words, you can place ads all over the internet in strategic places that will bring in visitors. A couple of ways that you can do this is through pay-per-click advertising like Google AdWords, and you can place Ads on classified sites. You can try and get free traffic by submitting articles or press releases that may be picked up by e-zine’s or newsletters. You can also take advantage of social bookmarking sites or traffic exchanges. The most ideal situation would be to get free “native” traffic from the search engines like Google and Yahoo!. But this takes a long time to accomplish and requires a lot of work to get your page within the top ten for your niche. This gets into a whole another realm of the internet known as search engine optimization (SEO), and is beyond the scope of this article.

Ultimately, if you want to be successful in affiliate marketing, you are going to have to be very diligent and put in some good old fashioned hard work. But if you get the basics down, pick a profitable niche, and can drive traffic to your website, then you can be successful at it. And as time goes by and you become more efficient (i.e. lowering costs while maximizing profits) you can make a whole lot of money. Some people have even been able to quit their 9-5 jobs and become full time affiliate marketers, making more money than they ever have before and all from the comfort their own home. For more detailed information on becoming an affiliate marketer head to The Scoop on Google, Affiliate Marketing & Making Money Online which covers everything that you will ever need to get started.

The Scoop on Google, Affiliate Marketing & Making Money Online …A unique website where the main goal is to promote Affiliate Marketing Success, and it is not all about making money!

Christopher William “Affiliate Marketing used to be a hobby of mine, but it has now turned into a passion…The last sale still feels just as good as the first!!”

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