Affiliate Marketing 101- a Three Step Guide For Beginners

To a beginner, affiliate marketing may sound like a complicated and though to master money making method. But the truth is affiliate marketing is far from being complicated. In fact it’s one of the easiest online money making methods to understand and execute. Affiliate marketing is simply the middle man concept, that has moved from the brick and mortar markets to the digital online market, and found a new identity. It’s a simple yet powerful way to make money online, in which the affiliate (middle man) earns a commission in return for generating sales/leads.
 

Using affiliate marketing, the seller is expanding his chances of success by reaching more potential buyers through the efforts of his affiliates, and the affiliates make money by selling a ready product, without having to take any risk by investing any of his own money. While it takes some general knowledge and hard work to be a successful affiliate marketer, the one thing that set affiliate marketing apart from other online money making opportunities is the fact that it doesn’t require any special skills or years of training to make money as an affiliate marketer.

Just like any new job or skill, as a beginner affiliate marketer you will face many chalenges, but if you truly follow these 3 simple steps, you are sure to succeed as an affiliate marketer.
 

 

Choose A Niche
The first step is to find a niche in which you are interested and/or passionate about. Like any other job, doing what you enjoy is an important factor in your success. You can use search engines and online forums to find what people are buying or taking about. Pick one and stick with it. Jumping from niche to niche will not get you far. An example of hot and profitable niche would be the diet and weight loss niche.

 

Find A Product To Promote
Now that you know what kind of market you are going to promote in, it’s time to find a high paying, easily marketable product to promote. This can be done by using affiliate marketing networks such as Clickbank,Commission Junction and etc. Register with some of these sites for free, and search their marketplace for the kind of product you are looking for. Upon getting accepted, you will be given a special link with your own affiliate id encrypted in it, which any time someone uses that link to go to the merchant’s sale page and buy the product, you will be paid a commission. Keep in mind that using more than one affiliate marketing networks, gives you a better opportunity for finding many different related product, since not all merchants use the same AMN to find affiliates. An example of a good product for diet and weight loss niche is obviously a diet plan, fitness program, e-book, gym membership and etc.

 

Promote And Promote
Here comes the last but most important step for making money with affiliate marketing, promotion. Now that you have your niche and product picked, you need to find ways to promote the product you chose. This can be done in many ways. You can either setup a website or a blog and start driving traffic to your site. You can also use a review site, where you write reviews and articles for a product is a simple yet effective way of promoting a product through your site/blog. Article marketing is another great way to promote products and services.

Another way would be to use sites like yahoo answers or e-how and such to answer or write how-tos related to your niche, and including your special affiliate link in it. Considering how many millions of people use these sites everyday, it is the easiest and fastest way to promote a product. In fact this is the number one way seasoned affiliate marketers use to make money. Because it’s a very targeted market. Meaning since you are answering questions related to your niche, the people who ask the questions are most likely already looking for such product. Plus it’s totally free, since you don’t have to buy your own website. Also, since these sites are already getting huge amounts of daily traffic, you don’t have to worry about driving traffic to them. Instead you can focus all of your efforts on writing good articles that will lead people to buy products your promoting.

 

 

Affiliate marketing requires a lot of time and effort, but if you are persistence enough and are willing to put enough time and effort into it, the rewards are great. After all affiliate marketing is one of the oldest and best ways to make money online.