One of the easiest ways to get started as an affiliate is Clickbank. The reason this is so easy is that anybody can sign up without having to have an existing website. All you need is a physical address and an email address. Clickbank will help you generate the affiliate link that you can use in any number of different websites or webpages. The other main benefit to Clickbank is that the payouts are relatively high. So, instead of a small percent of a physical product, you’re usually making 50 percent or more on a product typically priced $50 to $99.

Most affiliate networks require a website and an application process. One of the more well known affiliate networks is commission junction. Google now has an affiliate program as well. You can also find dozens of other affiliate networks by doing some simple searching on the internet for keywords like affiliate network or affiliate programs.

Another popular type of affiliate marketing is called CPA which stands for Cost Per Acquisition. This is a scenario in which the company whose products or services you’re promoting is going to pay you for a lead. So, when a visitor to your site completes some action, you get paid. This may be as simple as someone putting in an email address all the way through someone completing a survey or multi-page application.

There are a number of ways to freely promote affiliate products. One way that you can find that is usually free is through online classified ads. Craigslist is the largest of these, but several other free online classified sites can generate a significant amount of traffic. The important part of doing anything related to online classifieds is to track your results. You should have a unique tracking ID attached to each affiliate link. If not, you’ll get hits to your site without knowing what is generating the traffic and resulting sales.

Article marketing is one of the best ways to promote affiliate products. Depending on which article directories you use, the idea is to write the article on a topic that is related to the product you’ll be trying to promote and submit that article to article directories. The idea is to submit unique articles so that the search engines rank those articles which gets traffic to the articles and clicks to the links in your “resource box” or “author profile”. I’ve found from personal experience that the click through rate for people who click on the links in your resource box is anywhere from 5 to 15% depending on the article and the specific call to action in the resource box.

Social networking is very popular and often times a relationship through some of these social media sites can generate some good sales. People will buy things based on the recommendation of a friend or acquaintance. If you’re participating in social networks where the interactions and relationships are based on a specific topic, find a product that you can promote that adds value to people within that category. If you’re part of a network where the members of that network are all dog owners, promote a dog training video series or ebook about dog training.

Blogging is perhaps the easiest way to get a website created without having to learn html or some new software. Blogs can be used to discuss benefits of ownership of a specific product (which you’ll promote as an affiliate) or some service that you can also promote as an affiliate. One key to success with blogging is consistency. If you can be consistent with your blogging, you’ll add a lot of power to strategy.

A more “traditional” or “old school” website can work as well. I wouldn’t recommend this method for most people as the automation and upkeep is typically not very easy and your ability to leverage other people’s work is diminished significantly. If you want to run your own website, I’d still recommend that you consider a blog platform, such as wordpress that will help you manage your content, but not have to rely on knowing any html and the look and the feel of the site is very customizable.

Pay per click advertising is another way to drive traffic to your website or affiliate program. This is one of the methods that can have the best results based on the ability to track visitors and what actions they take based on what words they just searched for. With this knowledge comes significant power because if you can approach pay per click advertising scientifically and make this a “numbers game”, you’ll always be able to get traffic, test what converts and what doesn’t and keep what works and drop what doesn’t. This is a sure way to be profitable if you can get past the initial expense of the learning curve.

These are only a few of the methods of promoting affiliate products. My advice is to pick one, spend a little time learning more about it and then start doing. There are things about affiliate marketing that you’ll never know until you try. Plus, you can’t make any money by just learning about this stuff. Come up with a solid plan and start promoting. Start with the options that don’t have a high cost and go from there. Good luck!

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