17 BEGINNERS Affiliate marketing primers and ideas

Morning!

With the economy continuing on its imitation of free-falling skydiving sans any noticable parachute, I’m finding more and more people are tentatively dipping their toes into affiliate marketing. But because it’s a relatively new thing for them, they find themeslves inundated with confusion regarding all of the choices available.

But not to fear! I’ve been doing affiliate marketing since 1998 (both as an affiliate and also as a product developer) and have it down to a fine art indeed. The following are some resources I think you’ll find to be rather helpful to you as you wend your way thru the jungles of this new and profitable beastie.

First off, what really IS affiliate marketing? At its most basic, it’s quite simple –

Someone offers a product (the vendor)
You say to yourself, Jeepers! My visitors would probably be interested in such a thing! Yippie!
You find the vendor’s affiliate program, sign up, and receive an affiliate link.
You (otherwise known as "The affiliate") add your affiliate link to your website or to your blog or … you get the idea. Perhaps the link includes a square button like what you see to the right (that’s for my Job Seeker’s Power Advantage Resume/Portfolio site – it’s a 2-tier career employment affiliate program. You can see the affiliate tutorial for it over at this link here.)
You take steps to drive your visitors to proactively click on the link. Ways people do this include writing a review of a product, writing a blog about the topic the product solves and the like.

That’s affiliate marketing in a nutshell.

Now, like teeny tiny mustard seeds grow into huge bleeping towering trees, that nutshell can blossom into venues you can hardly imagine! For example, some vendors (does Amazon.com ring a bell?) have beeyons and beeyons of products which allow you to market virtually anything and everything….and other vendors provide you with the tools to build an entire store within 5 minutes that focus on specific niches. For example, check out my Exercise Store like so:

Notice all those cool tabs that have targeted niche products? That store was built using AOM – an incredible Amazon affiliate tool that everyone should use (there are two versions, free and paid – I myself use the paid as I always want all the commissions I generate…driven to me. ).

But wait! There’s more! You can ALSO (you knew there’d be something like this, right?) build entire sites about niches!

Consider my site ExerGamingNews.com .

I built that when I was in my DDR kick! Not only can you find DDR jokes and news, you can also find, oh, hmmmm…DDR clubs! Look very closely to the right hand side, however – you’ll see targeted niche products (in this case, offered by eBay) proudly march down the side. And of course, I’m an affiliate of eBay as well….should anyone buy any of those auctions, I get the commission.

So! With that as a nutshell, how can you learn affiliate marketing?

First off, you can check out my ebook Beginners Make Money Cookbook over at my Rich Hermit series. But don’t buy it there – I offer readers like you a complimentary copy HERE! (Just scroll down until you see the Complimentary Download image). Besides completely demystifying how to make money online, I also have a chapter or two about affiliate marketing as well.

Next, you can check out some nifty affiliate marketing forums like:

And then don’t forget about great affiliate marketing blogs like:

Affiliate marketing, while it does take time to know the ropes, can really be a true boon to helping you bring in more and more income and beef up your bottom line. And with the economy smooshing itself as it currently is doing…that can only be a Very Good Thing Indeed.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling

ps – speaking about affiliate marketing, have you seen:

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