Launch Your Online Business Today! Ten Steps To Get You Started...

Affiliate Marketing is a process in which a company wants to get advertised, but doesn't want to spend a ton of money. Instead, they look to people like you and me, people with unique experience, to represent their company or product.

The product can be digital, such as a dowloadable book, a tangible item such as a TV, or a company like Petco, or Overstock.com. Mostly you will find digital products and companies that will carry products you can represent. The best-known companies to sign on with are the following:

* Clickbank

* Commission Junction

* Linkshare

* Shareasale

Sounds simple, right? Well, yes and no. What appears from the outside to be an easy process actually requires a ton of research and learning. Have you heard of keywords? META tags? And if you were to decide to do this, how would you even start?

That's why I'm here. I'd like to walk you through some of the steps you'll need to take to just get your toes wet, and also tell you about a few of the products I've read that have been helpful... or not!

The first thing I recommend is establishing an account with Clickbank. The other companies want to see at least a landing page (like this one) before they'll let you sign up.

But definitely explore the other Affiliate companies, as understaning what you have at your fingertips will help you to decide on a direction.

When I was in 5th grade, my teacher gave our class a pop quiz, and told us we had 2 minutes to complete it. We all put our heads down, and rushed to get through an impossible number of problems for that amount of time. When he called time, he walked around the classroom, and without even looking at our work, he wrote a big red F on each of our papers.

Then he told us to look at the last problem, which simply said:

"Read through this test, then write your name at the top of your paper."

GREAT lesson! He had been encouraging us to know where we were going before we set out to get there, and we all failed miserably in our effort to just get the test done.

The same mindset works here. If you try to rush everything, it's far more likely that you will fail. As you explore affiliate marketing, people will flood you with software offers that promise you'll make $700 in the first 10 minutes. Don't fall for those! In order to really succeed here, you must understand each of the elements, and how to pull them together.

The best thing to do is read a LOT, and to study successful lenses and websites. In doing this, you'll begin to understand what people mean when they tell you to find a "niche." Don't get too caught up in keywords at the beginning, just focus on finding your calling.

Explore the Squidoo Top 100

for some wonderful, creative lenses to get your Squid-juices flowing... and for more information on how to make yours succeed.

Also look at successful websites such as these made by users of Site Build It

These two are the best examples of what you too can accomplish:

1. This is made by a father of two, who developed this idea after working with his kids...

Coolest Kid Birthday Parties

2. This was developed and is maintained by a 14 year old girl!

Anguilla Beaches

Both of these sites bring in multiple thousands of dollars per month.... and for more examples, check these out...

Sample Sites

So your goal at this point is to build a killer website that makes you all the money you need and deserve. By understanding where you are going, you can now move back to the beginning... let's focus on building blocks!

Ok, so you've browsed the Affiliate Networks, signed up with Clickbank , and browsed the products... and now you're thinking, "What the Hell?"

It's ok! We all go through that!

So here's the deal... You need to have a focus. In the online world this is called a Niche. But how do you know, and how do you market that?

When you Join Squidoo, download the book Everyone's an Expert (About Something). You'll start asking yourself the fun questions...
>> What do I know that makes me unique?
>> What makes me happiest that I want to share with others?
>> What do people come to me for advice on?
>> If I could do anything everyday, what would it be?

Don't limit any of your answers! Maybe the answer has to do with raising your kids, maybe it has to do with making those kids :o), maybe you are a great banker, or an excellent organic gardener... or maybe--like my husband claims to be-- you are the world's best couch potato. Excellent! That's all usable.

Anything that you know a lot about can be turned into a great concept... and unlike your job that kills your creativity, you'll wake up feeling alive and alert. So start thinking!

My suggestion is to start small. You have a ton of stuff to learn, and you'll learn it better if you are not overwhelmed.

Find a book that works well for you, and build a whole campaign around it. I'm including a few hardcover books here that have been helpful to me, and I'm including a link to My Review Page about some e-books, software and affiliate sites.

What matters most at this point is your learning curve.

Once you've gotten through your first campaign-- idea, landing page, keywords and tags, articles, promotion, creating ads, building a website-- your real ideas can then blossom!

Don't get caught up in the money aspect right now... that naturally has to come later. Think about how you feel when a telemarketer calls during dinner, or when a door-to-door saleman disturbs you on your day off trying to force something you don't want down your throat.

The goal in internet marketing is to avoid coming off like this at all, and that takes finesse! If you focus right now on learning the steps with one simple product, you'll be able to use that to build your own empire in the next few weeks! How cool is that?

This is where it gets hard to find steps, because you need to make some decisions. The two primary questions you need to ask yourself are:

A. Do I think I can do this pretty much alone?
B. Do I feel like I could use some support?

This is entirely up to you. Here's how I started:

I was searching the internet trying not to get shafted... and I got shafted! I signed up with LegitimateOnlineJobs, who charged me $65 to get a free account with Clickbank. See? You are already ahead! I've gotten nothing else out of their site. If you want to learn more, head back to My Review Page for a more thorough accounting of that.

Then I found the Rich Jerk... ditto the above directions. Here's the tacky "free" website I got charged $150 for My Rich Jerk Web Page

Then I found Holly Mann...

Holly's book is the best book available. I recommend it so highly, I'll personally guarantee that it'll be useful to you. It's a great starting point for a beginner, and it's excellent material for the advanced webmaster.

Here's a link to her site for the book:

Get Honest Riches now... Click here!

If after reading that, you feel you need more help, I recommend joining an affiliate group.

The ones I recommend most are Wealthy Affiliate University and Site Build It .

Explore these sites, and, again, more info on my web page. Wealthy Affiliate charges a low monthy fee of $30 ($29.99) with full access to all of the tools you will need. Site Build It (also known as Site Sell) is one of the most highly acclaimed tools around. You can join as an affiliate and receive a great deal of information for free, but to become a full member there is a one-time flat charge. As you have seen above, the sites being built by SBIers are some of the best (top 1%) on the internet. Out of billions of sites, that's a huge accomplishment!

If you choose to join one or both of these, your progress will move along so much more quickly. There is a wealth of information, support, forums, and more reading material that is priceless.

You are doing great so far! And now, if you are anything like me, you want to get started.

What makes you lucky right now is that there is a nice man named Todd Alan who has put together a FREE tutorial on getting through your first campaign. I can't tell you how much this did for me!

Go to Long Tail Treasure and sign up for this course. Todd walks you through all of the steps to build that important first campaign.

While you are working through his course, you can still study the other materials available here.

Ever read an ad online and think to yourself,

"There's something fishy going on here..."

That's poorly written marketing, which you need to avoid at all costs. Whether you are selling your own product, building a webpage based on your great concept, or writing reviews for affiliate products, you still need to earn your customer's trust.

It was a huge relief to me when I decided upon internet marketing as a career to learn that I could actually work with integrity and honesty. You see, I had worked for a couple of sleazy, dirty people, and it always made me feel gross. I thought at the beginning that marketers had to be sleazy too, but it's just not the case.

In fact, many honest marketers look down on the shifty people, because they make a bad name for all of us. This includes people who SPAM, who artificially try to elevate their numbers (which Google can now pick up on quickly!), and who lie about things to make a buck.

So what's the answer? Don't do that!

Be the good person that I know you are. Learn how to write creatively, but for the internet.

How?

Well, you can't learn without the proper tools... This is a free book from Site Build It, and it's THE Book To Read about writing for your website.

If you want to get good at writing for the internet, like anything else, you'll need to practice-practice-practice, and read read read!

Part of your marketing may also involve submitting articles to online publishers. Explore these sites and read articles that other people just like you have written. The more you read, the more you understand how to craft a good review, and how to sound trustworthy. Here are some of the most well-known sites:

* Ezine Articles
* Searchwarp
* Goarticles

There are hundreds of other sites out there, all of which you get as part of Holly Mann's Book as well as a great tutorial on how to write articles for submission.

The one caveat with submitting articles is that you cannot submit the same article to multiple sites. Each one needs to be unique. If you are writing reviews, focus on several individual parts of a book or a product and write about that. In doing so, you can then add a link sending people to your landing page, and ultimately to your website.

I'll be honest, I have not used Pay-Per-Click advertising yet. I tried a couple of ads, but decided to wait until I had a more legitimate reason to advertise this way.

If you are just starting out, many people will try to get you represent them through PCC. I say it is costly, and keeps you from focusing on the more important stuff.

I'll give you an example of why this is a problem...

No matter how you get involved, one of the lessons you'll need to undertake is how to use keywords. These are the words embedded in your article, ad, landing page and website that get picked up on when somebody does a search. Clearly very important!

However, as a newbie, what you don't know is how to work the system so that your ad gets run, and hopefully clicked on, but it doesn't cost you too much.

I'm a member of Wealthy Affiliate University, among other affiliate community sites, and as part of their system, they have put together a couple of ads you can run as part of a PPC campaign. So I gave it a shot.

In order to do this, you need to sign up with Google Adwords. There is a one-time fee to sign up of about $5. The rest of the time, you will only get charged if your ad gets clicked on. Here's the catch...

Getting people to click on your ads is pretty easy if you have the right verbage, but getting them to click through is the challenge. On top of that, getting them to actually purchase from you to offset the cost of the click is an art form.

Remember when we talked about ads feeling fishy? Many, many IMs simply get a hoplink from Clickbank, and attach it to a ppc campaign. They don't use landing pages, and they don't use their own website. These are the people I click away from immediately, as do most other people. This means that if you run an ad with just an affiliate link, you will get charged, but your chances of making a sale are slim to none.

Here's the second half of that problem. The ad that WA put together for beginners is based on some high demand keywords. Those ads are based on dozens of variations of the words "wealthy affiliate".

In the beginning, I'll bet that worked, but now that it's so well established, there are hundreds, if not thousands of people using these same words. What does that mean for you?

It means that in order to get your ad run a reasonable number of times, you'll need to bid on those words at $.75 to over $1 depending on what you choose to use.

Trust me, that adds up quickly! Even if your ad is only clicked on 10 times out of 45,000 impressions (showings), you are out $10. And if people are not "clicking through" that's money down the drain.

You can go to other search engines like Yahoo and MSN, but Yahoo wants you to prepay, which I refused to do. I didn't bother seeing how MSN handles business after that... I decided to wait until I had a better grip on it all.

It's far more advantageous to keep working on the steps above, get your website up, and then have Google advertise on your site because it is so popular. Then, every time someone clicks on an ad, Google pays YOU!

So unless you feel masterful and flush with cash, hold off on this idea until you see how the whole system works. Getting your business running for free, or minimal cost is much more fun!

That's one of my dogs, I just had to show you how adorable he is!

Your end goal is that niche-specific, well-designed, easy-to-navigate, keyword-rich, uber-cool website that will make you more money than you ever thought you'd see.

But you don't know the first thing about HTML, or building a site!

You can handle this a few ways....

Wait! Before I get carried away, no matter what you do, you'll need to register a domain name. That's the actual name of your website... for example www.ems-reviews.com. My favorite place is GoDaddy, where you can register a dot-com domain name for less than $10 per year.

After you have your domain name, you can link it to your site after building it with one of these options...

1. Again, my highest recommendation is to join an affiliate site like Wealthy Affiliate University which has a program called Site Rubix. This program is designed with the complete novice in mind, and is so easy to use. You need not know HTML, you can build three sites with around 5000 pages, and the hosting is indeed included. It's a screaming deal!

My review page is built on Site Rubix.

2. Likewise, Site Build It has a phenomenal program built into your membership. As I mentioned earlier, they have a tremendous number of sites built by members that are consistently in the top 1%. You could be the next one!

3. You can go to a site like Joomla, that provides free website design, but you'll need some HTML, and you'll need to pay for hosting, and a domain name. It's a lovely program that I have started working my way through. I'll add a link to my site from them when I get it running.

3. You can find a web designer and pay them to do the work for you. The most expensive way to do this is to find and hire someone, either online, or locally. However, again I cannot stress how much you get from these sites, at Wealthy Affiliates, Holly Mann, and Site Build It, you can advertise on the forums for some help. This is an inexpensive, effective way to find qualified help for minimal cost. Win win!

Post the links to your landing pages and sites when you get them up and running... I'd love to see your work!

You've made it through this page....

Maybe you've checked out a couple of the links...

You are really ready to make that first sale...

Now I'm telling you to be patient?

I'll give you a little vignette...

Back in March of 2001 I fulfilled a dream of mine by opening a little restaurant. The day I opened for business, I was ready to go! And as I have worked to develop my online career, I often think about that moment.

What I've had to remind myself of, however, is of the three months I spent remodeling the entire space, buying dishes, kitchen wares and equipment, menu planning and costing, staffing, training and establishing vendors. But on top of that, there was an additional year and a half that I spent writing and developing my business plan.

All of that work combined allowed for the moment that my first dollar could walk through the door.

What if I had just decided to open a restaurant, plunked down some money for a space and opened my doors? It would have been an overnight failure!

The same process has to happen here, but fortunately for you, the time frame is much faster. Within a couple of months, you can have your business running and making money! But you must be prepared for it to take a little time.

I believe in visualization for moving ahead in life. I'm pretty sure that my focus on finding a great man to marry helped me find my wonderful husband. Now my focus is to make money, or... dare I even say it? To get rich!

That's my goal, and perhaps it's yours as well. But if we are going to do this, it must also be done right.

So once again-- have a clear picture in your head of your ultimate goal-- a picture of your concept, your website, and all that the site will bring to your life. Don't be afraid to ask for help, that's what online forums are for. Then go for it with everything you've got!

I wish you happiness, prosperity, and a lifetime of fun and laughter!

Before I let you go to conquer the online world, I want to make sure you have a little primer on safety.

If you sign up for Todd Alan's course, he has a great video in one of his lessons regarding this.

But here's the general rule of thumb...

You will be signing up for many, many accounts as you develop your business. In doing so, you may find the temptation is strong to use the same user name and password so you can easily remember how to login.

This is a very bad idea!

Say you use your email as user ID and some variation of your child's name as a password for some of your personal accounts, such as email and online banking.

You decide to continue to use this information for your business.

Then some hacker on an online publishing site breaks your code, and decides to try it out with some fancy software he's been developing (because he has no life), and discovers your bank account and email. The damage he or she can cause is unthinkable!

I actually had my computer "hijacked" a few years back to the degree that whoever took it over could turn my computer on remotely! I had to throw the whole thing away, and I lost everything on my computer (but fortunately, not anything else).

Write all of your passwords down in a secure place, but don't base them on the elements of your life that can be guessed on.

I use the same username in a number of places, because as my business grows, I want to be easily recognized as I bounce around. I probably shouldn't even do that, but it's a choice I've made. However, I keep my passwords unrelated to myself or each other, and change them frequently.

Another option you can look into which Todd Alan recommends is RoboForm. This program will automatically keep all of your passwords in order, but safely encrypted, and will automatically log you in to your various sites as you visit them. You do no typing (which can be monitored), and it changes passwords for you automatically.

Your program can also be downloaded onto a USB storage device, and taken anywhere in the world!

RoboForm offers a free 30 day trial after which it costs about $30 for the download. It's absolutely worth it!

My last suggestion revolves around your phone number.

For some reason, most of these online sites require that you give them a phone number. It's ridiculous, but you can't fill out your registration

without it.

My solution? Actually, I must give credit to my husband for this... buy a phone number that is simply a voice mail box. In our area, this costs $16 per month, but it's usefulness is priceless.

If you read my review of LegitimateOnlineJobs you'll note that I first tried my hand at online surveys. The problem is (among many problems!) that suddenly you are plagued with telephone marketers calling you every minute of the day!

They are aggressive, rude, and can be costly if you are using your cell phone. After I gave out my number to just a couple of sites, it took about ten minutes to begin receiving calls, and has taken weeks to undo the damage.

Plus, I received a SPAM text message, and some pervy freak is using a local number to cloak his number so that he can harrass me... I've had to involve the authorities, and may have to change my number.

Now I use only the voice box number for online stuff, and once a week my husband and I listen to all of the messages from solicitors, and giggle over the fact that we didn't have to talk with them.

If you can swing it, it's the best way to go!

Just because your business is online, does not mean that everybody can jump right in to your personal life. Think safety all the time!

So cheers to you- and to all of your dreams. With integrity, honesty, and hard work, I know that you will make it. I'm behind you all the way!