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Monday, December 25, 2006

Affiliate Marketing for the Complete Beginner

Affiliate Marketing for the Complete Beginner
by Charles Hamel


Have you been wanting to get involved in Internet Marketing as an Affiliate but just didn't know where to begin? Well read on and I will take you by the hand and show you how to get started. But first let me give you a little background on what it means to be an Affiliate Marketer. Becoming an Affiliate Marketer basically means you are a salesman for other peoples products just like a salesperson in a store or a Avon distributor, the only difference is you are not meeting people face to face but are selling other peoples products online.
So now that you know what an Affiliate Marketer is let me tell you how to get started.
The first thing you want to do is sign up to be an Affiliate. The most popular companies at this time are Commission Junction and Clickbank. Now there are small differences in the two companies, Commission Junction has merchants that sell hard products where Clickbank is more along the line of digital products, like E-Books and Software. They both are totally Free to signup with.
So your first decision will be what type of product do you want to try an promote. I would recommend starting off with a product in a field that you are somewhat familiar with. Now to get started on promoting a product you can go about it 2 different ways. The first way I want to discuss is if you have a no money to get started and want to go the free route. Don't fret because most of you will be in this category.
No Money to get Started
After you have signed up with Commission Junction or Clickbank or both for that matter, choose a product to promote. Again I would choose something that I am familiar with or have some type of interest in. If you are starting out with Clickbank then usually there is no approval process, you simply type your username in the space provided and your affiliate link will be generated for you, for the product you have decided to promote.
Now that you have your affiliate link, you can start promoting it, and if someone clicks on it and buys the product you make money. Different Merchants will offer you different percentage commissions. Most common is 50-75%, so if you send someone through your link to a site that sells a product for $97.00 you are going to get 50-75% of that minus the clickbank or commission junction fees which are not much. Sounds easy enough? The concept is beyond easy, promoting the products can be tricky. To make the process easy I will cover some different ways to do that with no money to start.
1. Write Reviews - Write a review of the product that you are promoting and submit your review to Free article directories. Have I lost you? It is best to write an honest review, you want to build your character as being honest and giving fair treatment, if the product is good then write about what you liked about it, and if it was bad or had some things or features you didn't like then write that too. People will catch on quick if you only write good things and praise all of the products that you review and will figure out your just trying to make a commission. Now you are probably wondering how can you review a product that you have never tried. Well now that you are a member of for example Clickbank and you want to review a product that costs $30.00. Buy that product using your affiliate link and it will cost you $15.00 and then you can give a review of it. Is this cheating? I don't think so, because the merchant is still receiving the same amount of money whether you sent someone to his site through your affiliate link and purchased it or if you purchased it yourself. If you have no money at all to purchase a product to review, then try and send an email to the merchant explaining that you are an affiliate marketer and that you would like to request a Free copy of their product to review, and that you plan on generating a lot of business for him and provide a detailed plan of how you are going to do just that. You will be amazed at how many complimentary copies you will get. Once you review the product and write an article about it, post it at the Free article directories and include your affiliate link in the article. Most of the article directories will not allow you to put affiliate links in the articles themselves, but will allow you to put it in your author bio. Some article directories that do allow affiliate links are Go Articles, Article Alley and Search Warp.
2. Become members at some of the marketing Forums and put your affiliate links in your signature. Then every-time you make a post in the forums, your short little add with your affiliate link will appear beneath your name. You can also put your affiliate link in your signature through whatever email program you are using. Then every email you send out will have your add and affiliate link in it.
If you have a little money to invest in your new Affiliate Marketing business, I suggest you get your own website. Now there will need to be some thought put in to this before you take this step. Choose a product that you are very interested in, because you are going to build a website around that product. Find out the companies rules as an affiliate, for instance some don't allow their name in your domain name, so do your homework. Then you will choose your domain name, such as www.widgets.com. Domain names cost about 10.00 a year for your own www. name. Then a hosting company charges anywhere from $7.95 - $12.95 per month to host the domain name and give you the space to put your site on. If you know something about HTML then you will be able to build your own site. There are also many software packages out there that makes this an easy step such as Microsoft Frontpage, or Adobe Dreamweaver. Once you get your site up with your affiliate link all over it, start promoting your site. Now you will not have to worry about the article directories that do not allow affiliate links because now you will send them to your website that has your affiliate link, which most don't mind.
So this is the beginner steps on how you can get started as an Affiliate Marketer and start carving yourself out a living on the Internet. Internet commerce is breaking new records every year and continues to grow. Don't miss out on your piece of the pie. Get started as an affiliate and start making that extra spending cash to help pay off some bills, pay the rent or if your really good at it quit your job.
About the Author
Charles Hamel is an active affiliate marketer who loves to teach others how to make money on the Internet. He resides near Houston, TX with his wife and 2 sons. His hobbies include yoga, meditation and computers. Learn more tips on how you can make a living as an affiliate marketer when you visit His Website

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