Beginning Affiliate Marketing | How to Choose a Mentor/Program

In the beginning, affiliate marketing can be confusing. When choosing a mentor consider how you best learn.

• Do you learn from reading and doing?


• Do you need to ask a lot of questions in order to understand?


• Do you need visuals of processes that help you understand?


• Do you need someone to look over your shoulder and keep you on task?

The personality of the program you choose is also vital when beginning affiliate marketing. Can you understand the language that the provider is speaking? Often too many of the courses available online are geared towards intermediate to advanced marketers and may indeed contain much valuable information, but if you can't understand it, the program is no use to you. Is the personality of the program helpful, understanding, and responsive? Many providers simply drop their program onto the internet and split. If you can't get a response when you are confused or need further guidance, again, how helpful is the program really to you?

I've tried several programs when I was beginning affiliate marketing. There are only two that I stick with and come back to again and again.

Features - If you are beginning affiliate marketing through article marketing, there is not a better program out there that will take you from knowing absolutely nothing about affiliate marketing to building your first campaign. Potpiegirl has a wonderful, easy to read style, and she's funny and down to earth. The other thing I like besides being very easy to understand is that she is so positive and encouraging. I truthfully believe that if I can follow her program, any one can.

The program includes:

One Week Marketing Plan Guide Book - the complete plan from how to research your campaign to how to get it running using nothing but free online techniques. This is the best way to build a sound foundation of knowledge when beginning affiliate marketing. Everything you learn here you will keep and build on as your business grows.

A Conversation with Nick - Potpiegirl takes Nick by the hand and walks him step by step through building his first successful campaign. Nick loves to ask every little question he has along the way, and many I never would have thought of. This little gem really made the guide book click for me.

Action Plan - A summary of all the tasks to complete day by day. Very handy especially if you are like me and sometimes stare and the computer screen wondering what you should do next.

Checklists - This is a very handy tool to use to set up and track all the information you need to complete a campaign. I still use the basic outline! Beginning affiliate marketing is often difficult simply because you have to organize everything yourself. This makes that organizing easy and not overwhelming at all.

Mind Maps - For the visual learners the mind maps will help put everything into perspective.

What this program is not:

It will not teach you any unethical methods of marketing - nothing bogus, manipulative, or over the line.

If you are considering beginning affiliate marketing through PPC techniques, this is not the guide for you.

Wealthy Affiliate is a powerhouse of online learning and support for beginning affiliate marketing. There are so many resources included in a membership that I hardly know where to start, so I'll cover the training aspects.

8 Week Action Plan - This course is available to you over the length of 8 weeks and will cover the very basics through getting started in whichever path you wish to follow. When beginning affiliate marketing, there is no better system available that covers both PPC and article marketing. If you finish this course, you will succeed, its that simple.

Learning Center - In addition to the 8 week course, the learning center provides further insturction broken down by level of beginning, intermediate and advanced. No guess work there. Everything from learning to set up your first website, how to ftp files, how to write better articles, etc.

Sharezone - Members post tutorials and videos for everyone's use and learning here. All of them are included free with your membership and most are exclusive only to WA - they simply are not offered anywhere else. What to learn about viral marketing techniques? Its there. What to learn how one member writes 100 articles a day? Its all there. You will have an entire library of all the best information and techniques right at your fingertips.

Forums - In the forums and in private messages you will see other members get one one one guidance from more experienced marketers as well as be able to ask anything you need help with. The site owners, Kyle and Carson, are also available for one on one mentoring. The forums are extremely supportive and worth the membership alone.

These are not even close to all the tools and resources that you will receive if you choose to join Wealthy Affiliate, but the are the most solid foundation available for beginning affiliate marketing.