If you are new to the online business world, you may just be wondering how you can get into affiliate marketing and making an income on the side for yourself. Doing so is not that complicated. I have created this "Affiliate Marketing Mini How To Guide" to help get you started. But remember, this is just a summary. I can't stress enough the importance of increasing your "affiliate marketing how to" education. Without the proper training it will be very difficult to be successful.
First of all, lets cover just exactly what affiliate marketing is. Affiliate marketing is when you promote someone else's service or product. A company, when in of getting help making sales, will allow people to sign up as affiliates. these companies are willing to pay a commission or a flat rate per lead or sale. Depending on the company, this percentage or flat rate will vary.
Affiliate marketing uses several methods to promote their affiliate products or services. For example, you can use a website, a blog, newsletter, email or ads. However, the most popular form of affiliate marketing is done with a website.
One of the first steps is to choose a market. Example markets are video games, musics, movies, and pets. Now, within those markets you'll want to find niches. The niches are targeted subcategories within a market. For example, german shepard dogs are a subcategory of the pets market. When you choose a market and niche that you want to promote, be sure that you choose one that you are some what familiar with. This way you can become an expert on the topic without starting from a clean slate. You'll already know something about the market.
Once that is done, it is time for a URL, or domain name, for your website. There are many places that you can get your own domain from. Some popular, reliable choices are 1and1.com , www.GoDaddy.com and HostGator.comt . Once you have decided where you will purchase that from, choose a domain name that has the topic you are selling in the URL for the best results. For example, if you are wanting to market cat food, you wont use a domain name that has dog in it. Make sure that everything is all relevant.
Now that you have your market and your domain name chosen, you will want to determine the hosting that you will use for your website. You need dependable hosting for the best results. A hosting company that has more up time than down time is best because during the down time, your website will not be accessible. It is worth it to pay for good hosting.I would suggest keeping your hosting company the same as your domain name company. This is a much more simple if you're just starting out.
Once that is done, you are ready to get your affiliate links and website set up so that you can market the most effectively. Determine the amount of money that you want to make, and set up an outline of how you are going to make it.
Learning SEO which is also known as search engine optimization is a great idea for promoting your website. Using SEO to get your site higher in the search engine rankings with keywords will pay off in the end. You can learn it yourself, or you can pay someone to do this part for you. It is up to you. However, you should know that learning and using SEO yourself is time consuming. Again, education is the key to success. The education I'm referring to is your "Affiliate Marketing How To".
Write articles about the market that you are promoting from your website and submit them to article directories. When you include a back link to the site that you are optimizing that will help you as well with the search engines. You'll want to learn all you can about article marketing as well. There's more than just writing something and posting it anywhere. You'll want to know what to include in your articles and which article directories are the best to get maximum exposure. This again comes down "Affiliate Marketing How To".
Affiliate marketing is not anything that you can make money with over night. You need to be able to build up and keep adding to your website daily or weekly, and keep it going. You can do it, just don't give up.
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