How to get started as an Affiliate
Written by Affiliates School
Affiliate Decision Tree
If you starting out to become an affiliate, that is someone who sells stuff through the Internet for commission, as with all business start-ups, you can start the right way and you can start the wrong way, and then get disappointing results, become disheartened, give up.
Which way is right way, which way is wrong way?
The wrong way is to sell stuff everyone else sells, as you have too much competition and advertising becomes too expensive
A decision tree has many branches, and you can make many wrong turns before you find the fruit. If perseverance is your thing and you love the work ethic, no problem, but if you want to know where the fruit is located before you start climbing, best to get some tips on navigation and have a clear objective.
Here are some navigation tips to find the right type of best affiliate program to join:
Count your hours, and divide your profit to calculated your hourly rate - if you slog away and get paid peanuts, chances are that you are being taken for a monkey. Many affiliates could get a better wage check at MacDonalds because they sell stuff that everyone else sells, so find a niche product with few competitors, and a generous commission program.
Nice site, no visitors. Many a monkey makes a nice website and believes that the world will beat a path to his website door - this has something to do with the cliche saying about making the world’s best mousetrap or something - anyway, they wont. Many fantastic products never reach full market potential. I know geekish engineers who invent fantastic products and go broke - they simply do not understand how to market, promote and sell their product. I know this because I provide outsourced sales and marketing support, and ship container loads of product every month.
You can make a nice website on Blogger for $10 with a .com name, and the templates are now much improved and easy to add lots of features, and blog posting can get your website mentioned - but you have to keep doing it, you need to focus everyday, how to promote your website.
Watch out for affiliate programs that have cookie expiry - means you don’t get paid after a set time period.
Get your website found, promote, promote and then promote your website. Look for products that attract a lot of interest - you can post videos on YouTube and other video upload websites. Write articles like this one, submit articles to websites like this one.
Use the google keyword tool to discover how people search for your type of product. Take hovercraft as an example. Search for the term hovercraft on the keyword tool, then sort the columns to find the highest search terms. Make a list of the 10 highest search terms. Write an article or Blog post, and enter the keywords as labels. Add the keywords in the text of the article, even use the keywords to create the article framework, but make it interesting. Then take your website domain name, and link each keyword in the article back to your website. This article started on Affiliates School, where you will find loads more free affiliate tips. Notice how my keywords in this article mirror the labels and text linked to our website. If you like the advice, please add a link to our website, we will reciprocate to help you build links - it all helps to get your website found to sell more products and make more commission. Visit www.affiliates-school.com/
If all this sounds like too much hard work, MacDonalds are hiring more staff.
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Article author
About the Author
Mike Glanville is founder of Affiliates School, a website that provides free resources for aspiring affiliates who wish to make money through Internet marketing - www.affiliates-school.com/
Further reading
Further Reading
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