Internet Marketing | Search Engine Optimization | The Basics Of Affiliate Marketing

The Basics Of Affiliate Marketing

Posted on April 28, 2008
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization |

I’ve been an affiliate marketer for about four years now. Affiliate marketing is an excellent business to get into, if you can find your particular niche. Most individuals who get into affiliate marketing have a certain product or service that they are going to market online. If they have a blue print of what they need to do and where they need to go to be successful, they will make a killing!

To start out in affiliate marketing, you need to come up with an idea of what you want to promote. Home security, identity theft products, any type of training course, web hosting services, dating services, car loans, payday loans, online video rental services, or magazines. They list can honestly go on and on all day long.

Once you establish a niche that you want to promote, you need to figure out how you are going to promote them. You either need a blog, website, or store front. You need some way for visitors to access these offers from the internet and from some form of website that you own. If you want to start slow and cheap, you can sign up for a free blogger account and promote offers that way. If you are going to be a diehard in affiliate marketing and hopefully sell your affiliate website(s) someday, you need to own rights to it. I use Host Monster for all of my websites. They hosting fees are very affordable, they have an easy to use control panel, and their customer service is to die for.

After you make your decision about whether to buy a domain or go with the free blog from blogger, you need to come up with a unique URL and name for your site. Try to have your niche keywords in the URL to help with the branding of your site. Next you need a solid design for your site. It needs to look professional but exciting. You also need good solid content explaining what your site is about so that the search engines will be able to tell what your site is about and categorize you properly.

Next, you will need to find the actual affiliate product to promote. There are hundreds of affiliate networks online today in which you can sign up for a free account and pull offers to put on your site. Partnering with a good affiliate network is vital to affiliate marketing. With a good partner and account manager to help you, you will have a much higher chance of success! Some of the networks that I personally work with are CPA Storm, Commission Junction, Filinet, and the Panthera Network.

Once you have your site all spiffed up and your affiliate offers loaded onto your site. You are ready to start driving traffic to your website. You can do this two ways,

I recommend that Craigslist is always an excellent place to start to get free traffic!

Affiliate marketing is fun, it is flexible, and allows you to do other things you love while it works for you in the background. I would suggest affiliate marketing to anyone interested in making money from the internet.

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Comments

2 Responses to “The Basics Of Affiliate Marketing”

  1. Farley on April 29th, 2008 4:32 am

    You mention using craigslist as a place to get free traffic, how do you do it once in craigslist?

  2. Greg on April 29th, 2008 4:09 pm

    Farley,

    You pick a good topic to submit under. In your case, I would probably put it under the services section. You need to write a nice little ad talking about your website and how it helps people in the area with a link back to your website.

    Just make sure to only post it a few times across a few different craigslists. You don’t want to spam or you will get blacklisted. Been there, done that!

    Good luck man!

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