Affiliate Marketing 101 – 5 Things You Need To Know Before Affiliate Marketing

Here is the first of many residual income affiliate program articles.

In this article you will learn…

1. What affiliate marketing really is.

2. Where to go to find products to promote.

3. What to do when you find that affiliate marketing opportunity.

4. How to start affiliate marketing without websites.

5. How to avoid affiliate marketing fraud.

So let’s find out what defines affiliate marketing.

According to Wikipedia: Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer generated by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Basically, this means that you get a predetermined amount of money for selling other people’s products. This is a general percentage eg 75%, but in other cases it is an already established figure. For example, you’ll get $1 for every click you send to the business owner, via CPV (Cost Per View) or CPA (Cost Per Action), we’ll get back to these later.

Where do you go to find products to promote?

The two main places are Click Bank (CB) and Pay Dot (PD), they are the best free affiliate programs, the reason these two are great to start with is that you don’t need prior experience to sign up with them. Other places like “Yeah CPA” and “Wolf storm media” require you to have an established list, website, and history. Not only will they let you join, they will review you, search, look at your site, ask for proof in some cases and with “Yes CPA” you have to send a letter of at least 300 words to one of their managers (daunting yes but I had to , and it was worth it if you do CPA).

What to do when you find that opportunity in the affiliate market

So now that you have signed up for an affiliate marketing opportunity, you now need to choose a product to promote. This is easy on CB as they have a search box and very good advanced search features. Make sure you choose a product that you are passionate about. For example, if you like dogs, you don’t want to promote cats. When you find your product, you need to make sure it sells by doing a quick search or by looking at how the product is doing by gravity (in CB). We will teach this in more detail in another lesson.

How to start marketing without websites

Okay, you have a product but you don’t have a website or you don’t even know how to make a website, you’re screwed, right? Wrong, there are some ways to advertise for free without a website.

1. YouTube, make a video promoting your product and have a link to your product in your video, a lot of people do this now, but that’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. If it didn’t work no one would.

2. Promote it on your Facebook page, have an event with your product and make it seem like the only way to get it is through you for a limited time. Or create a real page for your product and people can like and buy it from your link.

3. Twitter – Create a Twitter page and talk about your product there with a link to the product or Facebook page.

How to avoid fraud

1. Stay away from affiliate programs that have a bad track record, don’t sign up for an affiliate program if you have a hard time joining, and there are plenty of free programs anyway. In fact, just stick to CB and PD when you start, this will save you time and money and you won’t fall victim to affiliate marketing scams.

Written by Simon Kirk, Visit http://www.shrimptopimp.com/money.html for your affiliate marketing solution. Get free affiliate software here.