Affiliate Marketing – Part 1 – Why the heck are you not doing this?

Author: Joe Whyte

Do you share my dream of sitting on a beach with a nice cold refreshing beverage watching the waves crash down on the reef of a beautiful island? Are you sick of doing the 9-5 routine? Wouldn’t you rather make money by sitting on your bum? Then Affiliate Marketing is for you! The greatest part about affiliate marketing is that once you put up a successful affiliate site you will virtually never have to touch it again and it will be a constant source of income for you. Its fast, easy and affordable and there is simply NO reason why you should NOT be doing this.

The definition of Affiliate Marketing is:
The method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying a finder’s fee for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per sale), or any combination. (wiki)

Now the first thing you might be saying is COM’N Joe it cannot be that easy. Yes.. Yes it is and here are the simple tools you need to get started on making millions. (please remember me when you make a million and repay me for this information ;-))

Affiliate Marketing Startup Kit.

1.Hosting Plan that host’s multiple Domain names.
2.Domain names
3.Free templates and/or design software
4.Affiliate Membership
5.Traffic Source
6.Paypal account
7.Hawaiin Shirt

I will touch on each of these points to help guide you.

1. Where do you find the best hosting Deal for your affiliate marketing? Lunarpages offers some great web hosting packages that are very well suited for Affiliate marketing. Large bandwidth and massive storage space with the ability to host multiple domain names under one account for an affordable price which will help you get maximum (ROI). If you already have a hosting account then transfer to Lunarpages and you will get a transfer CREDIT on your hosting account.

2. Where do I get my domain names? You can get a free domain name when you purchase your hosting account with Lunarpages.com. Add additional domain names for a low price. It helps to keep your domain names with whatever hosting company you are hosting with that way you stand less chance of renewal problems.

3. A sites design makes the difference. The better the design means the more reputable you are. Its your first impression on the viewer so there are free templates but it would probably be worth paying a few bucks to get a nice one. Check out Flash Template Design for some affordable but Quality designer templates. You can upload these and have a live site in a matter of minutes.

4. Where do you sign up to become an affiliate marketer? Check out this list of affiliate marketing sites in order of importance. Sign up for all of these and start joining affiliate programs that you think you can make good money at. (later post’s will cover this more in depth)

Commision junction
LinkShare
Chitika
ClickBank
AzoogleAds

5. So now that I’m affiliated how do I get people to purchase these products through me? Simple, you just need to start driving traffic to your sites. There are many ways to do it and to be honest you should not just do one but do all suggestions as it is best to tackle a problem like this from all angles. You can start with doing some on and off page SEO. Write your own content and get some relevant inbound links. (advanced SEO will be covered in later post’s). Then start with some SMO (social media optimization).

Here are some sites to aim at when considering SMO.

Digg.com
Reddit.com
Netscape.com
StumbleUpon.com
Myspace.com
Shoutwire.com
Craigslist.com

There are a ton more. If you would like to contribute anymore please do not hesitate to post them in the comment section.

Then you also have PPC (pay per click). Major ad networks that you can trust are going to be:

Google Adwords
Yahoo Search Marketing
MSN Adcenter
ContextClick

Again there are a lot more then this but these are the major ones that you can trust and will most likely see a better ROI on. Do not leave out blog commenting and forum activity. If you are a web hosting affiliate then get in tune with that industry and start posting comments on web hosting blogs and web hosting forums. You have to find your market and target them.

6. How do I get paid? Go to paypal.com and setup an account and use that email when you fill out your affiliate network applications.

7. Now what about my hawaiin shirt? Go here to find your hawaiin shirt.

If you are really interested in making money online then you need to start with the basics. If you want to try and make money online this upcoming year then follow my post’s on affiliate marketing and together we can reach your goals.