Firstly let’s clarify what affiliate marketing is.  Affiliate marketing is, simply put, earning commission through referrals. You become a commission-only sales person for a chosen company, or companies.

Typically you would sign up to an affiliate network – such as Commission Junction, Trade Doubler just to name a few of the hundreds (if not thousands) of networks and choose from their lists of available merchants to promote.

In fact it’s probably the fastest, easiest and cheapest way of getting started with making money online!

So how to get started – well there are literally tens of thousands of things to promote using affiliate marketing, from tea bags to big screen TV’s…  Obviously the latter will make you more money per sale, however big screen TV’s will also have tougher competition than the humble tea bag…  A simple tip to get you started is to pick something to promote that you know and preferably love – it’s much easier to talk about something that interests you than something you know absolutely nothing about.

Once you have chosen your niche, the find a suitable affiliate scheme – you can either trawl the networks, look for recommendations on affiliate forums or scour Google – I highly recommend spending a bit of time on a few affiliate forums as you’ll also get some valuable feedback about how the program is run.

Then it’s just a case of getting started with your promotion – be it blog, forum, membership site, ppc/ppv or even off-line marketing – the list is endless.

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