How To Start Making Money From Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the same as internet marketing.

So what is affiliate marketing? Like any market there is the product or a service and there is the consumer. Affiliate marketing is basically the middle person bringing the product/service to the consumer.

There is a product or a service that is on the market, what Affiliate Marketers do is to get this product/service to the attention of the consumer and in doing so get a commission for it, hence making money from affiliate or internet marketing.

Basic computer skills - The fact that you are reading this article means that you already have sufficient computer skills to start affiliate marketing. No computer programming knowledge required

Internet connection

Spare time to get yourself started and learn the ropes of affiliate marketing

Article Marketing - The Free Approach

Advantages

No capital required - this approach doesn't cost you a penny so you can still be ranked on the first page of search engines such as google.

Disadvantages

Takes longer for a consistent stream of income

Must write and submit lots of articles but once you create a system, you will save yourself a lot of time.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) - The Paid Marketing Approach

Advantages

Faster stream of income

You choose your budget, audiences and marketing techniques

Disadvantages

Requires start up money

Must have a clear understanding of this technique otherwise one can end up losing more money than you are making

The 4 Day Money Making Blueprint (4DMMB) is a video tutorial package teaching the ins and outs of article marketing. As mentioned above, article marketing is the approach without any start up costs.

It gives step by step practical guidance on how to make money using article marketing, from finding a niche (consumer market) to formatting, writing and submitting articles.

It has over 15 hours of in-depth video coaching showing you where to go, how to get it and what to do - It beats being left with a pile of instruction manuals that you have to slog through with no guarantees of understanding it.

If at any point whilst watching the videos there is something that you don't quite understand, 4DMMB will either personally contact you to answer your questions or post updated videos to answer all questions posed by you and other members of the 4DMMB.

There is also a 4DMMB forum to help answer any questions that you may have as well as a community to learn from fellow members. This package also entitles you to a lifetime access of all video and content updates as search engines i.e. Google, Yahoo, MSN etc are constantly changing its rules and regulations.

The 4DMMB video tutorial package costs $29.00 and it offers a 60 day money back guarantee if you are not happy. This is how to start making money from affiliate marketing using article marketing techniques which are all free methods.

To help you get started download your free 30min video - 'How To Find A Profitable Niche To Sell To'.

The Wealthy Affiliate University (WA) This program shows you both routes to internet marketing, as mentioned earlier; Article Marketing which requires no start up costs and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Paid Marketing which does require a start up cost.

It's a comprehensive program and thorough guide to all the ins and outs of internet marketing with access to the invaluable and most talked about infamous WA forum. You can spend hours on the forum alone, it is packed with ideas, tips, services and helpful experienced members happy to help.

They provide step by step guidance to how to earn a steady income online and provide all the tools, learning resources to enable you to start earning as soon as you join. They cater for all experiences to internet marketing from the very beginner with no marketing knowledge to the more experienced and advanced internet marketer.

Here are some of the features included in The Wealthy Affiliate University:

An 8 Week Action Plan
Targeted for beginners to understand the internet marketing terminology and a guide to getting started

Website Builder
Build your own website without any prior website programming knowledge

In-depth Niche Reports
Unleashing hot new niches saving you time in research and development

Jobs Within Wealthy Affiliate
Earn money straight away doing jobs for other Wealthy Affiliate members

Free Web Hosting
Available for all members to host up to 3 domains

Create & Own Your Own Blog & Space
Be part of the Wealthy Affiliate community showcasing your savviness

Rapid Writer Tool
This tool generates highly optimized content for your articles and websites

Personal Coaching
If you have any questions or problems that the community forum cannot help with there is always a 'panic button' that you can access for personal help any time.

Being a member gives you full access 24/7 to all tools, resources, services and support enabling you to learn everything you need to know about internet marketing and how to start.

Wealthy Affiliate University costs $39.99 per month which gives you access to all the above or they offer $359.88 for annual subscription which reduces the fee to $29.99 per month. It's entirely up to you! You can just complete the 8 WEEK ACTION PLAN COURSE and cancel your monthly membership anytime.

If you join now you can claim their well known book 'Beating Adwords' as a bonus to all new members which is worth $67. Join now to claim this bonus.

So if you want a kick start on how to start making money from affiliate marketing, Wealthy Affiliate University maybe just for you, whether you're a beginner or an advanced affiliate marketer.

There is nothing more difficult than trying to understand a topic or subject that you have never ventured before and without proper guidance we can end up giving up merely due to the fact that we are so confused and overwhelmed we just didn't know how to start.

Learn Quicker...

We all know that we learn a lot quicker when we have someone guiding us along every step of the way. It's like getting training for a new job and the person training you used to do that job so he/she knows the ins and outs and ensures that you know exactly what to do too once they are not around.

However, what if there is no person to train you and there are a set of books to read through and that is your training? You'd probably get there eventually but it's definitely a lot slower and painfully tedious.

Options...

Choose one (or both) of the recommended resources mentioned above to start making money from affiliate marketing. But, in order for these tutorials to be beneficial you must take action with these courses, you can't just read about it, you must complete the tasks they tell you to do as you go along. If not, affiliate marketing is not really for you.

1. Find a product or a service to promote

This can be anything you've purchased recently in the last 6 months. Don't worry if this product/service is saturated. The most important role of an affiliate marketer is to know how to sell a product and whom to sell it. In other words, you need to find a targeted audience for your product (this is also known as a niche). After all, what were your own reasons for your purchase? By thinking like the consumer you will target the consumer.

2. Make sure that the product you are promoting has an affiliate program

Join their affiliate program to get your future commissions.

3. Keyword Research:

The role of an affiliate marketer is to get your material (in the form of an article or website) to a search engines' front page (such as google or yahoo). This means that you have to have some idea what your consumer is searching for.

In other words, you need to find out what words/phrases visitors/consumers are 'typing' on the search engine. Hence, this is known as Keywords.

To start making money from affiliate marketing you must research a specific targeted audience to promote your product/services who are in the process of investigating to BUY. You don't want to target an audience who are just researching online as they are not in the I WANT TO BUY frame of mind yet.

Here are a couple of tools to help you find relevant keywords to base your article/website on to reach your targeted audience:

www.adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
This helps you narrow your broad search to a smaller yet specific audience. For example, don't use 'Make Money Online' as your keywords because this term is far too broad. Instead you want to use this keyword phrase 'Learn how to trade stocks from home' which is targeted for a specific audience.

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
This will give you ideas of coming up with relevant keywords

Once you have some keyword phrases that are related to the product you are promoting you want to see if they are highly competitive. To find out, on Google Homepage type in your keyword phrase using " at the beginning and " at the end of the phrase then click Enter. If the search results come up with less than 5000 listings, it is a good keyword phrase to use in your article/website.

4. Article Writing/Building A Website

This is your material to get traffic (to get people to view your article or website).
If you are writing articles you need to make sure that you are giving viewers helpful information otherwise search engines will regard it as being spam.

You want to include these in your articles:-

Original content. No cutting and pasting of other people's articles!

Use the keyword phrase in the title and body of your article

Minimum of 250 words

Make sure you include your affiliate link within the article that leads the viewer to the merchant's page

Send your articles to different Article Directories such as:
Squidoo
Ezinearticles
Articlebase
GoArticles

5. Social Bookmarking

This is to promote your articles/website once they have been published by getting them indexed. This just means that the search engines has picked up your article/website and will return it in the search results when your keyword phrase is typed. To do this, go to www.socialmarker.com