For those who have been around longer along with many webmasters know exactly what Affiliate Marketing is all about and what it takes to be successful.
If this is the first time you come across these words, you may just be wondering what it is and how you can get into affiliate marketing and making an extra income on the side for yourself and your family.
Well, let’s just start by defining what affiliate marketing is in a simple to understand language – Affiliate Marketing is a way of making money by referring other people to buy someone else’s products or services. You will get paid a percentage of the sales commonly known as a Commission as a reward for bringing buyers to the seller.
A big percentage of people earning revenue online deal with affiliate products.
Most companies today allow people to sign up on their companies as affiliate in order to increase their sales; they are willing to pay a commission or a flat rate per sale.
Affiliate Marketing can be a decent way to earn a living or for an extra revenue on the side.
There are few ways you can use to make money from Affiliate Marketing. Even though I will not go into details, I will point out some of those ways: You can use a Website, a blog, Email newsletter, Pay Per Click Ads etc… The list goes on…
However, the most common form of Affiliate Marketing is a website. All you need is set up a website and then start promoting the website.
Many will say that money is in the list(using newsletters), but if you are a newbie I would suggest you start with a Website or a blog and then move from there.
The first thing you need to do is brainstorm and find a niche or a market that you will be comfortable promoting. I have seen guys who have tried to promote lingerie sets and they mourn of not making a single sale simply because they do not have what it takes to persuade a woman to purchase.
The bottom line remains; you need to choose a niche that best suits your style and you are comfortable promoting or telling your friends about.
Now that you have a market in mind, then it’s time to put your plan/ idea into work.
The first thing you need now is a domain name. I know… some of you might be asking; and what is a domain name? Well, A domain name is a unique name that identifies who you are online. A domain can be yourname.com. A good example of a domain name is facebook.com.
When you hear of the word facebook.com what comes to your mind? For me what I think of is a social sharing website… Likewise, you need to choose a name that says who you are or what you do. If you chose a niche dealing with babies; then a good domain name for that niche would be something like cheapbabysupplies…
The … above should be replaced by your domain extension depending on the availability. But wait, what is a domain extension? This is something like .com, .net, .co.uk, .org ….
You can register your domain name on godaddy, namecheap, crazy domains, 123reg just to name a few. I would also suggest you buy hosting at the same company where you bought the domain name.
Now that you have a domain name and hosting ready, you need to find someone to install a website for you related to your niche market.
Learn SEO – Search Engine Optimization which will be very useful to rank your website higher on the search engine. If you do not have the time to learn SEO, then you can pay someone to do this for you.
And where can I get this companies that I can sign up with to be their affiliates? You wonder. There are so many of them but for now you should start with Clickbank or Amazon.
Start writing articles related to the market you are promoting and submit them to article directories and if possible update your website with new content every week or fortnightly to ensure that your website stays fresh.
Please note that affiliate marketing is not a get rich quick project. This is a long term project where you need to build up from scratch and through trial and errors until you find what works for you.
