Beginner who is interested in affiliate marketing

It is not passive nor is it "on demand". Anyone telling you that is just trying to sell you a "system".

If these are your reasons for getting interested, quit now. And yes, it takes money to make money.

At this point, my reasons are merely to educate myself with people that know what this kind of business is all about. I don't fall for hype talk easily, so I'm investigating.

Cost money to make money, this online world is like any other business in the world.

Now, even so it's possible to make money without investing, at least the at the begining, then I highly recommend to keep investing more and more when you have results.

First you need to pick a niche, should be something you know a lot, like or willing to learn because you will need to create content about it.

Don't worry, everything could be a niche and you can make money, there're some few of them better than the rest, only because a lot of people are interested about that, like fitness, food, marketing, etc.

Once you have your niche, start your own blog, create content, GOOD content with tons of value, then time to promote it. SEO and social networks are totally free, forum traffic, blog commenting traffic, groups on social media, all of them great and free BUT you need to work hard, this is a serious business you're not going to be successful in 1 week.

Then you need to find an affiliate network to promote things related to your niche, could be clickbank, jvzoo or amazon (there're tons of them but these are the most common).

Add widgets to your blog with the affiliate links and make some traffic to your blog!

That would be your strategy, finding people and followers on social media, provide tons of value and drive them to your blog so they can see your affiliate links.

You can start a blog for free on Wordpress or WealthyAffiliate, I recommend you to create a facebook fan page, twitter, google+ profile, pinterest profile and tumblr blog to find people interested about your content.

Having an email list should be your main priority, you can sign up on GetResponse but isn't free and cost money, even if you can test it for free for about 2 weeks you need to pay for it after that, so maybe you can avoid this and make it as I said before but in the end once you make some money invest on it and build your own email list from your blog offering something awesome for free in exchange for their emails.

Having your own email list would be great, because you can promote things directly to your followers, but never promote too much stuff, connect with them, build a relationship and provide them high quality value, otherwise they will unsub.

SEO could take time, but find good keywords with the google keyword planner which is free and be consistent, this will not work in 1 week keep going and working hard everyday, this is your business if you're not serious enough for your business, things are not going to fall from sky.

Work hard for your dreams and never ever give up friend, if you have questions send me a pm! good luck.

Beware of and do not join any affiliate program that is not 100% free to join. But you do have to spend money on one or more domains and hosting at the barest minimum, though you may also want to spend on related tools and advertising. And do get your own domain and ad-free hosting that you have to pay for, don't go with anything less than that.

Hi ofXfaithXpowerXandXglory;

It's hard to say, from what you have given us, exactly what you do know or don't. Being an ex college professor, I will assume you know nothing, which very possibly would be to your advantage.

Since you want to break into the field as a "newbie" I can't think of a better place to start than with "Anik Singal". A self-made multi-millionaire. He is an excellent teacher and right now he has a course that would be perfect for the new guy on the block or anyone else for that matter.

He tells it like it is and he can get you thinking straight and starting fast. He has a book The Circle of Profit, I recommend you read. It will save you a lot of time and heartache. He was giving the book away for free, but whatever the cost, it's worth it.

You can find him at circle of profit dot com .....

Use Google and search this forum.

I highly recommend you check out Affilorama.com

They have free training on affiliate marketing that is perfect for giving newbies a "crash course" so they at least understand the general idea of how it works.

Affiliate marketing isn't necessarily hard to understand once you have a guide to follow but like any other business, it takes hard work to start seeing results.

Regards,
Daniel

I think affiliate marketing is too broad a term in itself because it's just like saying "I sell other people's stuff and get a commission".

How do you sell it?

Do you go door-to-door, over the telephone, via the mail... it's all selling but there are lots of different ways to do it.

In the UK we have a site (moneysavingexpert) and it's essentially a huge site with money advice, he links to different companies, banks, has tools to show you the cheapest options for you and (must) earn a fortune from all the affiliate commissions.

Then you got the dudes who have an audience, sell their own products and throw in affiliate promotions now and then.

You have niche sites, like review sites with links to Amazon products.

And you have guys who simply buy hoards of traffic, drive it to squeeze pages, sales pages, and fake-blogs to get affiliate sales. Some build lists, some send it direct to the vendor.

Affiliate marketing is broad and for the later one (buy lots of traffic) you need big balls because you might be spending (say) a $1000 to make $1100.

Whatever you do, get started and stick with it dude.

Good luck.

Quite a few valid points before me, but I just want to add one thing that a lot of online marketers miss out on. Provide value for your list/followers. Any product you promote, any email you write to your list should help your potential customer. Educate and provide value. Best of luck.

"I would like to ask the basic questions of what exactly is affiliate marketing and how do you start small in making money in it?"

What is affiliate marketing? You promote other people's products through your affiliate link which is provided by those whose products you are promoting. Whenever someone clicks your affiliate link and buys something you get a commission. Commission can be a fixed amount of money or it can be set as a percentage of the price paid. Commission can also be rucurring or one time commission. With recurring commission you get money every month or every 3 months or every year. With one time commission you get money only once for each product or service sold through your affiliate link.

"does it cost money to make money in it? "

After you pay for a domain and webhosting 10-40$, you can start making money with no money. In this case you have to work a lot and spend a decent amount of time. However, if you have some money to invest then everything will be faster and easier.

"what platforms should I consider as well as reliable companies to work with. "

Best affiliate networks are Rakuten Network and Amazon Associates.

Hope this helps

Your getting paid a commission when you referr a new prospect and that prospect buys and becomes a buyer. The company whether its online or off will then pay you a commission usually on the sale amount.

As with any business and this is no magic ferry tale either but you need a budget. This budget is to manage the tools you will need such as hosting, a website, a autorepsponder and your going want some capital for marketing. What matter what people tell you this is a business and it takes money to make money.

For years I peddled with free source and yeah they work, I still use them today to do things like test headlines and if pages convert or not but once I started to understand I was willing to test and a little and get results so much faster and easier than doing it for free and the real money comes in for us affiliates is when you can send traffic on demand to your pages and offers.

Making money online is all about the numbers and the numbers tell the whole story right from the very beginning.

Type in "affiliate marketing" or "make money with affiliate marketing" (or some variation of it) in the search bar above. You will receive all the answers you are looking for.

I think you should start by joining a membership site to learn the basics first. I recommend Wealthy Affiliate University only because I am a Premium member there and they include FREE web hosting once you upgrade to premium? You can start as a free member for 7 days with most Premium advantages but to keep them you will need to go premium starting at $19 for the first 30 days, then $47 a month.

Or you could try the Chris Farrell Membership which has easier to understand and do training but no free web hosting? Those in my opinion are the best places to begin and learn so that you will then know what affiliate marketing is and what to do?

If you are a beginner in affiliate marketing, why not visit my website where I have posted over 70 articles to make money from affiliate marketing.

Yes, affiliate marketing works, only for those willing to learn and invest time and effort.

The cost involved in affiliate marketing is quite affordable (<$30 for domain name and web hosting).

The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you can make money from home.

It is not even a part-time job. In fact, it can easily replace your 9-5 job, if you do it properly. Having said that, affiliate marketing is certainly not that easy.

Just like with other things in the world, you need to spend time and effort in it. You will need to try different affiliate marketing programs and see which model generates more income for you.

But, to start with, you need to have your own domain name and web hosting. It is quite affordable (only cost <$20).

Then, you need to create good content on a regular basis. Then post your content on your blogs regularly. You can also submit your articles on article directories. Make sure to create original, useful, and relevant to your target audience. Also, include a link back to your site in the 'resource box.'

If visitor are interested in your articles, they will definitely click-through to your affiliate website. Keep submitting articles on a regular basis. This is because promotion has to be your number one priority. Promote, promote, promote. The more people know about you and your affiliate business, they more likely they will visit your site.

And the more visitors on your website you bring, the more sales you will ultimately make.

So, for now, just set up a website and create content and also publish them on your blog and submit to article directories.