Have you been wanting to get involved in Internet Marketing

as an Affiliate but just didn’t know where to begin? Well

read on and I will take you by the hand and show you how to

get started. But first let me give you a little background

on what it means to be an Affiliate Marketer. Becoming an

Affiliate Marketer basically means you are a salesman for

other peoples products just like a salesperson in a store or

a Avon distributor, the only difference is you are not

meeting people face to face but are selling other peoples

products online.

So now that you know what an Affiliate Marketer is let me

tell you how to get started.

The first thing you want to do is sign up to be an

Affiliate. The most popular companies at this time are

Commission Junction and Clickbank. Now there are small

differences in the two companies, Commission Junction has

merchants that sell hard products where Clickbank is more

along the line of digital products, like E-Books and

Software. They both are totally Free to signup with.

So your first decision will be what type of product do you

want to try an promote. I would recommend starting off with

a product in a field that you are somewhat familiar with.

Now to get started on promoting a product you can go about

it 2 different ways. The first way I want to discuss is if

you have a no money to get started and want to go the free

route. Don’t fret because most of you will be in this

category.

No Money to get Started

After you have signed up with Commission Junction or

Clickbank or both for that matter, choose a product to

promote. Again I would choose something that I am familiar

with or have some type of interest in. If you are starting

out with Clickbank then usually there is no approval

process, you simply type your username in the space provided

and your affiliate link will be generated for you, for the

product you have decided to promote.

Now that you have your affiliate link, you can start

promoting it, and if someone clicks on it and buys the

product you make money. Different Merchants will offer you

different percentage commissions. Most common is 50-75%, so

if you send someone through your link to a site that sells a

product for $97.00 you are going to get 50-75% of that minus

the clickbank or commission junction fees which are not

much. Sounds easy enough? The concept is beyond easy,

promoting the products can be tricky. To make the process

easy I will cover some different ways to do that with no

money to start.

1. Write Reviews – Write a review of the product that you

are promoting and submit your review to Free article

directories. Have I lost you? It is best to write an honest

review, you want to build your character as being honest and

giving fair treatment, if the product is good then write

about what you liked about it, and if it was bad or had some

things or features you didn’t like then write that too.

People will catch on quick if you only write good things and

praise all of the products that you review and will figure

out your just trying to make a commission. Now you are

probably wondering how can you review a product that you

have never tried. Well now that you are a member of for

example Clickbank and you want to review a product that

costs $30.00. Buy that product using your affiliate link and

it will cost you $15.00 and then you can give a review of

it. Is this cheating? I don’t think so, because the merchant

is still receiving the same amount of money whether you sent

someone to his site through your affiliate link and

purchased it or if you purchased it yourself. If you have no

money at all to purchase a product to review, then try and

send an email to the merchant explaining that you are an

affiliate marketer and that you would like to request a Free

copy of their product to review, and that you plan on

generating a lot of business for him and provide a detailed

plan of how you are going to do just that. You will be

amazed at how many complimentary copies you will get. Once

you review the product and write an article about it, post

it at the Free article directories and include your

affiliate link in the article. Most of the article

directories will not allow you to put affiliate links in the

articles themselves, but will allow you to put it in your

author bio. Some article directories that do allow affiliate

links are Go Articles, Article Alley and Search Warp.

2. Become members at some of the marketing Forums and put

your affiliate links in your signature. Then every-time you

make a post in the forums, your short little add with your

affiliate link will appear beneath your name. You can also

put your affiliate link in your signature through whatever

email program you are using. Then every email you send out

will have your add and affiliate link in it.

If you have a little money to invest in your new Affiliate

Marketing business, I suggest you get your own website. Now

there will need to be some thought put in to this before you

take this step. Choose a product that you are very

interested in, because you are going to build a website

around that product. Find out the companies rules as an

affiliate, for instance some don’t allow their name in your

domain name, so do your homework. Then you will choose your

domain name, such as www.widgets.com. Domain names cost

about 10.00 a year for your own www. name. Then a hosting

company charges anywhere from $7.95 – $12.95 per month to

host the domain name and give you the space to put your site

on. If you know something about HTML then you will be able

to build your own site. There are also many software

packages out there that makes this an easy step such as

Microsoft Frontpage, or Adobe Dreamweaver. Once you get your

site up with your affiliate link all over it, start

promoting your site. Now you will not have to worry about

the article directories that do not allow affiliate links

because now you will send them to your website that has your

affiliate link, which most don’t mind.

So this is the beginner steps on how you can get started as

an Affiliate Marketer and start carving yourself out a

living on the Internet. Internet commerce is breaking new

records every year and continues to grow. Don’t miss out on

your piece of the pie. Get started as an affiliate and start

making that extra spending cash to help pay off some bills,

pay the rent or if your really good at it quit your job.