Simple Affiliate Marketing Guide For Newcomers

There are many ways you can begin an online business which will make you money. For those who have no connections one of the easiest ways to jump into the online business world head first is becoming an affiliate to one of the name brand websites. All the major websites which include websites such as amazon.com, walmart.com, ebay.com, and clickbank.com have affiliate programs. Usually the commission is quite low to start, but if you start selling products your commission will begin to increase. To become an affiliate marketer you should understand what affiliate marketing is. Affiliate marketing is when companies offer a commission to affiliates that send customers their way. This is a simple definition, but covers the different types of affiliate marketing quite well.

To really succeed at affiliate marketing you should create a presence. I am sure you have come across those who advocate using your social networks as an affiliate marketing platform, but this is like running a massive business out of a studio apartment. You need your own space where you can create and market the products of your choosing. There are many resources that will allow you to get started and one of the most important will be your single page hosts. These are fantastic for getting your feet wet with affiliate marketing and the two top sources are hubpages and squidoo. Both of these will allow you to create a presence and make money. For serious writers you may want to start a blogging platform with blogger.com or wordpress.com. Those who know HTML or are learning HTML you will want to create a presence from scratch using free web hosting such as 000webhost.com.

When creating a presence focus on content rather than your product. One of the main reasons I enjoy hubpages is their strict content guidelines. They do not accept duplicate content or low quality content. If you write unique content they allow you to earn from your pages. Hubpages is a bit different from the rest of the competition because they allow you to integrate Google Adsense which is a PPC publishing and they allow the integration of Amazons affiliate program.

Wherever you decide to create a business to reach the full income potential you will need an understanding of search engine optimization and social marketing. These are the two largest forms of free website traffic and should be learned by anyone trying to build an income. Some of the social websites you should be aware of especially if you are a content publisher is the social bookmarking websites such as digg.com, stumbleupon.com, and delicious.com. Search engine optimization is a bit more complicated compared with social marketing.

Search engine optimization is the process of ranking well in the search engines. When affiliate marketing the terms you will want to rank well for are the terms directly related to the product your are marketing. For more experienced marketers I recommend setting up presences and ranking well for the title then finding the products which fit your content. This is when Amazon and the other massive affiliate marketplaces are extremely beneficial. Place the terms you would like to rank well for in the URL, titles, and in the content. Another important aspect of search engine optimization is using resources such as article directories and free web directories to build links. To find a list of article directories search Google for “list of article directories” and for a list of free web directories visit directorycritic.com.

If you would like to read more articles like this one visit my Online Business Blog.