What is affiliate marketing and how do I get started?
by: Shawn Dutton
Affiliate marketing is taking someone else's product or service and advertising it using your own affiliate website, link or email campaign in order to make money. The owner of the website/product/service will pay you a percentage of each sale generated through your unique affiliate link or website. Sounds a bit confusing, but in reality is a very simple process with a win/win situation for all parties involved and a fun way to make money online.
How to get started:
You have two options to consider when doing affiliate marketing, whether to have a website or to simply advertise using your unique affiliate link. Many affiliates will create an informational website to be used as a basis for related affiliate links. This can be a great option, due to the fact that you would only need to advertise one website in order to make money. Only 6% of people that surf the net click on ads. Therefore you will need 1.5 million its a month to make money.
To go this route, think of something that you are passionate about or something that is a hot topic right now. Once you have determined your theme you need to decide on a website name. To find ideas and keywords to be used as a URL, or domain name, I would recommend using http://wordtracker.com to find appropriate popular keywords related to your theme. It is good to use a popular keyword as your website and domain name so that you will rank higher in search engines.
Once you have your theme and have chosen a name, you need to register your domain name and obtain website hosting. I recommend using Homestead for your website hosting needs. They offer a site builder that does not require knowledge of html when you purchase website hosting.
Your next step would be to build your website and fill it to the brim with great information related to your theme. A great and easy way to do this is to get articles from free article websites like the ones listed below:
http://www.1st-in-articles.com Out of Business
http://www.ArticleHub.com Account has been suspended
Then, once you have a great website full of information about your theme, your next step is to work on search engine optimization. Do a search on Google for SEO and you will find lots of free information on how to do this. You also need to offer a free newsletter (email) so that you can establish repeat visitors.
When your informational website is complete and fully optimized, submit it to all of the major search engines. Google's "submit a URL" can be found under "About" Google. This is the main one and the best place to start.
Now you are ready to start adding affiliate links to your website so you can earn money! Sign up at these free websites and find appropriate websites to affiliate with:
Add Google Adsense to your website for added revenue. Advertise using Pay Per Click such as Google.com/Adwords and Overture.com. Continue to add a page of information to your website daily. The more information you have, the higher your chances of ranking with more keywords on the major search engines. Have fun maintaining your website and watching your traffic...and your revenue grow! Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money and your earning potential is almost endless. Affiliate marketing is something you can get started doing today to earn money online.
The affiliate management sites are constantly changing. The scams are forever changing also. Unless your already making money with an advertiser do not use ads that expire within a year. Some advertisers make a fortune stealing from publishers, authors and webmasters. Each week dozens of advertisers are terminated by the top affiliate sites and then later reinstated. Also your terms and conditions change constantly with advertisers. The advertisers then do not pay for oudated links. Class action law suits have been filed by publishers (webmasters) cheated out of millions of dollars.
As a webmaster I register domains with godaddy.com they only allow me to register one product every 45 days with any ISP address. This causes me to loose hundreds of sales per year.
If you ever get notice that an advertiser has been terminated take down their links asap and never use them agian. At first I was getting a million hits a year and never made any money. I talked to some experts and found most get 1.5 million hits a month minumum to make money.
