Your Affiliate Marketing Guide

Affiliate Marketing is something that many webmasters know how it’s done, know what it’s about, and what it takes to be successful. However, if you are new to the webmaster world, you may just be wondering ” how can I get into Affiliate Marketing and make an income on the side for myself “. Doing so is not that complicated, and I have created this guide to help get you started.

First of all, lets cover just exactly what Affiliate Marketing is.

Affiliate Marketing is when you sell or get leads for someone else’s service or product. You are going to find that there are lots of people doing this. When a company needs some help making sales, they allow people to sign up as affiliates. In return the company are willing to pay a commission or a flat rate per lead or sale. Depending on the company, this percentage or flat rate will vary.

Affiliate Marketing can be used to make a decent income in several ways. You can use a website, a blog, newsletter, email, ads etc. The list goes on and on. However, the most popular form of Affiliate Marketing is done with a website. When you choose the market you want to promote, be sure that you choose one you are some what familiar with. This way you can become an expert on the topic, and everyone will know that you are a king of that market.

Once that is done, it’s time for a domain name (yourname.com). There are many places that you can get your own domain name or URL from. Once you choose a (yourname.com) that has the topic you are selling, for the best results. For example, if you are wanting to market cat food (catfood.com), you wont use one that has (dog.com) in it. Make sure that everything is all relevant. Once you have an idea on a URL it’s time to check if it is available. Sometimes the one you want to use perhaps is unavailable due to someone else using it, then you need to think of another.

Now that you have your market and your URL chosen, you will want to determine the hosting that you will use for your website. You need dependable hosting for the best results. A hosting company that has more up time than down time is best because during the down time, your website will not be accessible. So, get some recommendations from others that have tried a few and use the best that you can find. It is worth it to pay for good hosting.

Myself I use GVO as they are very reliable and have a good backup team that can help with any queries. You can also get your domain name from them and it makes it a lot easier to get things set up. If you go to the bottom of their web page to the listings, click on this link Domain Registration you will be able to check the domain name you have chosen to see if it is available.

Once that is done, you are ready to get your affiliate links and website set up so you can market more effectively. Determine the amount of money that you want to make, and set up an outline of how you are going to make it. There are so many ways that you can get your website out there to be seen, and you will want to make the best decisions. Finding the best ways to do this, is to make sure it is cost-effective, which is a good start.

Learning SEO, which is also known as search engine optimization is a great idea. Using SEO to get your site ranked higher with search engines keywords will pay off in the end. You can learn this by yourself, or you can pay someone else to do this for you. It is up to you. However, you should know that learning and using SEO yourself is time-consuming. Hiring an SEO guru might be better for you in the long term.

Then start writing articles about the market you are promoting from your website and submit them to all of the article directories. When you include a back link to the site you are optimizing and that will help also with the search engines.

Affiliate Marketing is not anything that you can make money with over night. You need to be able to build up your business, keep adding information to your website daily or weekly, and keep it going. You can do it, just don’t give up.

There can be many pitfalls along the way if you don’t find the right people or products to advertise…………..I can testify too that.

To save you a lot of time and hopefully money I would first have a look at a company owned by my now mentor Dean Holland. The company is called “Internet Profits”. I wish I had known of them some years ago but here is you chance to get off on a positive note and check them out.