How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

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Affiliate marketing is the process of promoting another company's products or services for a commission.

This is the way I've been earning a full-time living online since 2006 and making money since 1998.

I love affiliate marketing because it's a very simple, transparent model for earning an income online. It's not about joining some pyramid scheme where you have to recruit people to sell random products.

You create a useful, themed website that provides information, and then casually recommend products that are related to your topic.

Let's say your site is about reviewing plasma TV's. You could join Best Buy's affiliate program and earn a commission when someone purchases a TV based on your site's referral.

See How Affiliate Marketing Works

Watch my video below to learn how websites can make money with affiliate programs.

A Quick Affiliate Marketing Tip

The key to finding success with affiliate programs is to build a content-rich website with useful information centered around a specific topic or theme.

Don't just haphazardly throw up a quick site or blog and string a bunch of affiliate links all over your pages.

You have to start by building credibility. And the best way to do that is to write about something you know a lot about.

Instead of hard-selling, the key is to subtly recommend products and services that fit in with what you are writing about in your content.

It's also a good idea to own the products you promote so you can speak intelligently about them and appear more credible to your audience.

Affiliate Programs/Networks I Use

I am an affiliate of many networks such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, ShareaSale, Clickbank, Amazon and more. It's really not about the network, it's more about the relevant products that you promote on your website.

So if you are creating a website about babies, you would search the various affiliate networks and look for products that relate to the theme of your website. Grab the affiliate code from your account, paste it into your site and you can begin earning from the referrals in your articles.

I offer more specific advice about finding the right topic and succeeding as an affiliate in my book, Niche Website Success.

Consider Using Site Build It!

Site Build It! is a good option for learning the ropes with affiliate marketing. That's because they teach you how to apply the content/affiliate model to your website.

Most web hosts don't provide help with building traffic and making money from your site because that's not in their business model. SBI!'s main goal is to show you how to build an income online, not just put up a website.

They offer a fabulous free guide on affiliate marketing.

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