The Basics

New affiliate marketers are coming online everyday. If you're one of them, I'm sure you've been asking yourself, "where do I start?"

There's so little time and so much information to absorb.

So many gurus with conflicting information.

Who's right?

Who should you listen to?

Before you do anything, you should sit down and decide what you are passionate about. It's so much easier to succeed if you're promoting something that excites you and gets your blood flowing.

You may be sports oriented. You may have a passion for selling sports related products.

In the words of Shakespeare, "In brief Sir, study what you most affect."

Find your passion and you're ready to get started.

The next question should be whether to promote affiliate programs? I know many marketers may disagree, but I think affiliate programs are a good starting point. Why?

** Pick the right program and you'll get a good education.

** It requires little or no capital to get started.

** A good program will supply you with sales aids and teach you how to follow up on prospects.

** It's like an apprenticeship. You're being paid to learn.

** You're building an opt in list. When you're ready to launch your own products, you've got a built in audience.

Just follow these simple steps.

1. Find a good program that will give you a marketing education and a solid income stream.

2. Build your opt in list.

3. When you're ready, start promoting your own products and services.

I'm sorry if you were looking for ideas on becoming an overnight millionaire. This isn't the plan for you. This simple plan is for you if:

B. You don't want to throw away money chasing "pie in the sky" dreams.

C. You realize that making money online is like anything else in life.

You have to learn in order to earn.

Get started now. Big goals are accomplished one step at a time.

Tips to help you choose your affiliate program

The affiliate program should be content related. When deciding on which affiliate program(s) to place on your site, consider the web site's topic. What is the site about? Who is your target audience? If your site is about baseball, you might want to consider placing sports related affiliates on the site that offer sporting goods, supplements and things related to the content of the web site.

Review potential programs.
Before deciding on a program, you should ask yourself, "Do the products and/or services offered have the potential to generate revenues for my site?" You should take a look at performance ratings, feedback and historical data for the program. Most affiliate programs offer some sort of statistical data that details average earnings per thousand visitors.

As you run the affiliate's advertisement on your web site, closely monitor performance. Again, most affiliate programs offer tracking and reporting tools than can be very helpful in measuring profitability. A major plus for affiliate marketing programs is that most are free to sign-up on and allow you to simply test a program and see what kind of results you get. Remember targeted marketing, "Who is my audience?"

Convert traffic into earnings.
Getting traffic to your web site is top priority, but is no guarantee for any kind of return. If a web site lacks content and is filled with flashy banners, the site will fail to generate any return. Content is king, and the content provided on a web site can make or break the site. Again, consider your target audience and build your affiliate marketing programs around this group.

Taken in part from The Affiliate Training Centre