What IS Affiliate Marketing and How Does it Work??
Affiliate marketing is basically finding products you can market online thru blogs or whatever method you want to, and make commissions off the sale of the product... for instance, I sell log furniture on Ebay for a local company and I run all the Ebay ads, etc and then when I sell something THEY ship it and THEY handle it but I made a commission for MARKETING it.
With affiliate marketing we are only the AFFILIATE and not the manufacturer... so there is no handling or stocking products or anything like that... Although you may not have access to a furniture store down the street... we can all do the exact same thing online with all kinds of products, especially ebooks, which is what thousands of people do thru Clickbank ...
Affiliate marketing is NOT quick money especially if you have never done anything like this before but the basics are simple.
I find products at places like Clickbank, Amazon, Commission Junction and Linkshare that I like to promote and then I blog about it or set up free pages at Squidoo with information and then when someone goes from my sites to the product sites and buys, I make a commission.
It REALLY is that simple - and yet it can be complicated at first - especially if you are brand new to whole idea of affiliate marketing.
I personally love to market Clickbank stuff as it is all ebooks and downloadable products and seems to be the best money maker
... and I strongly advise getting something like the One Week Marketing Plan to help you with it all!
You can see some of my Squidoo pages that I have built if you go HERE which can give you an idea of what we do with Squidoo as a website and Clickbank as a product source...some of my Squidoo lenses get traffic and others just sit there.
I have a very bad tendency to jump around and get too sidetracked when I have too many ideas!
Here is Some Simple Advice... for anyone that cares to use it.....=)
If you think affiliate marketing is something you would like to do, go ahead and set up a Squidoo page - simply go to www.squidoo.com and it will walk you through setting up your own lens, which is simply a fancy name for a blog or website ... hey, it's free and you will learn a lot as you go along :)
The biggest trick to making money with affiliate marketing is in getting people to find your stuff online and that is why I have tools available on my work at home blog HERE and also on this website - to help with online marketing techniques...
The marketing part is where our biggest learning curve is at but if you can put on your hard hat and plunge in for a week or two, it will all start making sense after awhile - about SEO, which means Search Engine Optimization by the way =) - about keyword research , and all those IM terms that makes your head hurt in the beginning!
Disclaimer! I have not personally used all of the programs I have on my site.... I try to only list the ones that have a good report out amongst other marketers, but I can not guarantee ANYONE'S success with ANY of the programs... I believe there are great tips and training in ALL of them for anyone but it still takes work to make things happen....
