How To Make Money From Affiliate Marketing

Everyone has to start somewhere. There isn't one single person online today who opened a site and had an instant list of 10,000 subscribers. You have to build them over a period of time.

But you can get started in affiliate marketing without a list, but it will involve a bit of work, dare I say "hard work" on your part. I've always told people that it generally takes 5 years to become an overnight success. Whilst it doesn't have to take you that long, don't be sucked in by the promises of huge riches in a week that are made by some unscrupulous internet marketers.

So the first thing I suggest you do is visit the Silent Profits site and obtain your free report on affiliate marketing. This is brand new and brilliant. You may not have a list, but this bloke does and he says he will give you $2,475 for every 100 people you refer to his list.

This is one of the most novel and interesting twists on affiliate marketing I have seen in years. Not only that, but it gives you great leverage because as you build your own list, you can keep promoting his site.

So go to Silent Profits and get your free report today. There is advice in the report for newbies and how to promote the site and gain your piece of the affiliate marketing pie.

The reality is that in affiliate marketing, like any other business, you are going to need some tools of trade". I'm only going to give a very brief run down here for your information, but if you want to know more, then lodge a question on the No Bull Forum. (As of April 20th it is down, but will be back up shortly.)

Web Site
Web sites come in many shapes and forms to use for your affiliate marketing. By all means, you can go the traditional route with a "static" site, but unless you know how to code in html, then this can be a difficult route and take much of your time.

A very viable alternative is a blog which you can get for free through www.wordpress.com. Simply register, choose a template that suits you and blog away. A word of caution however and that is that on wordpress.com you can't add a lot of the plugins that are available to maximize the functionality of Wordpress. You can however obtain hosting somewhere and host the blog yourself which gives you free rein. You don't have to download the Wordpress blog software generally as a good hosting company will have it available for installation via their Cpanel in the Fantastico area.

Of course, you can always use Squidoo to set up a lens for your products. However, like any page you set up to promote products via affiliate marketing, I would suggest you own them. Seriously, how can you talk about something and recommend it to people unless you have read or experienced the product itself. This may involve a little investment of time and money on your part, but it gives you credibility because you can talk honestly about the product. Oh, and DON'T recommend products you think are rubbish. Remember, you're in this for the long haul, not for a quick buck!

Autoresponder Program
This is a must have in order to build your own list so you can do mail outs. Whilst the big boys use places like Aweber and GetResponse, they are very expensive for newcomers. Having been an Aweber customer, I also found their interface confusing at times. A great alternative is Parabots. It's under $50 and once you own the program, that's it! You do need a hosting service to keep it on, but once loaded you can run as many lists as you like.

Affiliate marketing links are usually quite ugly and horrible. You can always use www.tinyurl.com to get a shortened version, but in my opinion, a tinyurl link is saying you've got something to hide.

A far better and more professional way of doing this is using some very, very simple PHP code. You do need hosting to do this, so if you've got it then you can have a link that looks like:-

http://www.yourdomain.com/recommends/yourprogram

Much nicer don't you think?

For full instruction on how to do this, read my article on cloaking affiliate marketing links on the No Bull site.