The way affiliate marketing works is you get paid a commission percentage by having people buy other people's products from you. It's just like working at Sears and you sell a lawnmower, except you don't get a hourly wage. However what's better than working at Sears, is that you get a very high commission percentage (usually about 50% or higher).
The reason why I enjoy affiliate marketing so much is because you don't need to take any orders, meet with people face-to-face, or call anyone on the phone. You get to work from home, or wherever you have access to a computer. The accessibility of affiliate marketing is also one of the perks of becoming an affiliate.
The first step in becoming a successful affiliate is finding the buyers. If there are buyers, there are products to sell to them.
In general, there are two types of buyers who will buy products in any type of economy and they are desperate buyers and passionate or rabid buyers.
Desperate buyers are those who have a problem and need an answer NOW. For example, maybe someone is looking of how to get rid of their nasty wart they have on their foot. This group of buyers have a credit card hot and ready for you, and are searching for the best answer to their problem.
The second type of buyer who will buy in any economic situation are the passionate or rabid buyers. These people buy on impulse because they absolutely "love" this type of product. Maybe they are golfers, and you have some new tips on how to becoming a better putter and lower your score. They will eat that stuff up, and want to buy from you immediately.
To find these type of buyers, you should go to http://www.ebay.com, http://www.amazon.com, or http://www.clickbank.com. Ebay and Amazon are among the top internet sellers overall, and Clickbank offers digital products for sale and thousands if not millions use Clickbank everyday.
Once you find one of these sites to use, the next step is to become an affiliate with them.
For ebay, you go to the bottom of the ebay page, where it says "Affiliates" and sign up that way. For amazon, you go to the bottom of the home page and click on "Join Associates". For Clickbank, you go to the home page and click on "Promote Products". With Clickbank, you need to get a "clickbank ID" which is your unique name that is put into your special link that customers click on to go to the product's page and buy it. If you don't have that in the link, you won't get any money, so don't forget that part!
For Clickbank, when looking for products to promote, you need to know what 2 things mean and they are: "&/Sale" and "Grav". $/Sale means how much money you will get if someone buys that product through you, and Grav stands for gravity, which basically means how popular the product is. The higher the number is, the more people are buying and promoting it. A good idea is to find something that is high enough to be popular, but not so competitive, so look for something in the middle numbers.
After picking products to promote, you should start writing some articles about them and submitting them to article sites. The ones that I like the best are: Ezine Articles, Articles Base, Go Articles, Article City, Search Warp, Article Alley, and Article Dashboard. All of these are free sites that you can use to get your articles out there, and on your way to making some money with affiliate marketing.
Another thing you should do is to setup a blog related to your products. I suggest using WordPress because it works so well in search engines. It's very easy to install and is free to use, as well as having many different looks to choose from.
After setting up your blog, try to update it as much as you can, as well as submit articles to the before-mentioned article directories and in no time you'll be getting free targeted traffic to your site. This is a very well laid out equation to making money with affiliate marketing.
A little thing to remember is to not get frustrated. Although it's easy to start affiliate marketing, I can't guarantee that you'll see hundreds or thousands in your bank account in the beginning. Great things usually take time, and you need to be patient. It's very important to continue to write relevant articles and submit them to directories, as well as update your blog frequently to keep the search engine spiders coming back, as well as your customers.
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
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