Affiliate Marketing: 3 Simple Steps To Start In …

Posted by Anthony Kpodo
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Affiliate marketing is a sales arrangement between an online merchant and a person who agrees to promote or market for a merchant or a product owner. Such a person is called an affiliate.  In this wise, the affiliate agrees to a commission for generating sales for the merchant’s product or service.

As such affiliate marketing may seem very simple and tempting. This is even accentuated by the numerous encouraging testimonies of merchants and affiliate marketers alike who have benefited from it. However, it is safe to note that affiliate marketing really involves  a great deal of hard work and persistence. Coupled with that you also need to be creative and flexible.

One of the encouraging testimonies stem from the fact that this marketing arrangement brings about a win-win situation for the merchant and the affiliate. The merchant’s products are freely promoted to a larger market through the affiliates and thus sales are increased. The merchant saves time, effort and money in getting affiliates to market his/her products and services. The affiliate, in a similar fashion, also wins because she benefits from each customer who makes a purchase of the merchant’s product or service. The usual arrangement is that the affiliate gets a commission on each sale made. It can be a fixed percentage or a fixed amount. And the best part of the affiliate arrangement is that an affiliate program is free to join.

However, affiliate marketing, though free to join, has certain guidelines which when followed, can bring immense benefits to the affiliate. The following three steps are the most basic to start your effective affiliate marketing campaign.

Step #1

Identify A Niche

Your first step is to identify a particular niche you are interested in or passionate about. This is to free you from boredom because you won’t be forced to do anything not in your line of interest. Moreover if you focus on a specific area you know well, it will help you bring out your best. You may pick your niche from online sites such as – ClickBank Marketplace, AssociatePrograms.com, LinkShare.com, CJ.com etc

Step #2

Look For High Converting Products

The second thing you have to do is to look for good paying merchants who also give the necessary support in the form of marketing materials such as text links, banner ads, classified ads and reports. In addition, check  well whether the products of such a merchant are high converting. After checking these vital information and satisfying yourself, you can now make a list of these good paying and high converting affiliate programs in your chosen niche. Next, create a website. Now, you can begin the business of promoting and making sales.

Step #3

Promote!

Promoting happens to be the toughest part, because it is through this that you would be able to increase traffic to the business website. If this traffic results in sales, you make profit. In doing so, it is possible to earn large sums of money in a short span of time depending on whether you use the right strategies and methods.

So, now that you have decided which products to promote and you have selected the merchant, you have to create your own web site with a domain name and reliable hosting. 

There indeed may be some challenges here because not all of us have the gift of programming or creating beautiful mini sites nor do we all have the time to learn all these picky details. If you happen to be so challenged, Instant Site Uploader can put everything into one system for you. This makes life easier so that you can now concentrate on the main business of Promoting!