Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing - Where to start?

This is a huge subject, filled with traps for the new player. There are many methods and many "Gurus" happy to share their "secrets" for large amounts of money. There are any number of programs which claim to "drive laser guided traffic to your website" and "make you rich by next Tuesday". 90% of these offers are a waste of money.

So here are the absolute basics you need to get started. There are other methods but if you follow these steps you can't go wrong.

• You must get a PayPal account if you don't have one already. This allows you to pay for things on the internet and for others to pay you.
• You need a program to create websites. I highly recommend XSitePro so go and get a copy.
• In order to create sites you will need domain names. RegisterFly often have specials where you can register domain names for less than $1 each. Namecheap is another popular registrar.
• Now you will need hosting space for the sites you will create. I have covered that on another page.

To get off to a flying start I suggest you buy a couple of premade websites to go with XSitePro. I have mentioned them on another page. They are cheap and will save you a lot of time.

Once you have your first website you can apply to Google Adsense  and other advertising programs including Chitika.
Since they ask you for your main website address you must have a site to tell them about.

Now you can put the Adsense and affiliate offers on your website and you are in business! Make more sites around various niche markets. Well, you do have to promote your sites a bit so people will know they exist, but that is another topic.

In the mean time, join a few of the more popular forums about web design and marketing. You will learn a lot.