If you are new to affiliate schemes and want to get started, you are likely to find yourself confused. Be in no doubt: you have to learn some new vocabulary. But there is also a real learning curve for you, and you will only develop your skills by doing before you can earn money easily. Here I want to summarize for you some of the basic strategies you will need to start mastering on your way to affiliate marketing success.

1. Pay per Click: To get started in affiliate marketing, it’s important to get comfortable with PPC or “Pay per Click” marketing.

You know those ads you see lined up on the right hand of every Google search results page? Those are paid ads where the advertiser has to pay Google a fee– anywhere from a few cents to US$50.00– each time someone clicks on one of those ads.

To use PPC profitably, master keyword research. When you first open your Google Adwords account, check out their keyword tool and play around with it.

For your PPC campaigns, you will need a lot of low volume search terms. So, note the “Global Monthly Search Volume” column in your keyword tool. This is where you will find those magic low search, low cost keywords.

2. Use the affiliate website to start with. Instead of going to the trouble of building your own website, you as a novice should just use the affiliate site given to you by the vendor.

The people who first developed the affiliate scheme want to earn money easily and with minimum trouble, so they will have put effort into setting up a good affiliate sales page. Take advantage of that!

Minimize the number of new tasks you have to learn. As a newbie, you need to avoid “information overwhelm”.

3. Advertise widely, advertise cheaply. There are loads of places to put up small ads with links to your affiliate sales page— try Craigslist or US Small Ads. There can produce good, targeted traffic— the lifeblood of your business.

4. Get subscribers. With some experience, you should think about building your own site, or outsourcing this job. The idea here is to continue selling through your affiliate links, but, crucially, having a sign up box where people can leave you their name and email. This will the basis of a subscribers’ list for a newsletter. (You can outsource a lot of that, as well.)

A subscriber list (a.k.a a customer list) is incredibly valuable to you. Chris Rempel, an online marketer I much admire, says that affiliate marketing may make you your first hundred thousand, but a great list may make you your first million. (He is a guy who should know!)

4. Go viral with free reports. Giving away a free report, and allowing your own subscribers to give it to their list in turn, is a great way to expand your list. Be sure to have a sign up link on each page!

5. Write great articles. Sorry to say, but there is a lot of trash published on the net. If you are a half-way decent writer, that is an opportunity for you— webmasters are eager for good content.

I make no claims to be a great writer. I do think, though, that I put a bit of myself into what I write, and so make good connections with readers.

And, of course, at the bottom of every GREAT article you write, you have a link to your site!

(Caution: Article directories are fussy about links. Learn the rules each one has, and stick to them. Don’t let a great article be rejected because you didn’t follow their rules on acceptable and unacceptable links.)

Let’s sum up: The goal is to earn money easily. So, go step by step. Start simply and progress to more difficult projects as you learn. If you are new to affiliate schemes, accept that you have a learning curve ahead of you. Be prepared for mistakes, and be prepared to fail. Success comes to those who are prepared to fail the most!

Want to learn more about how to earn money easily? Go straight to this great resource at www.affiliatemarketerinfo.com where you can discover more about affiliate schemes and how they can change your life.

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