Affiliate Is Not A Dirty WordPosted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010 When I first started out on my journey to become a successful Internet marketer I used to wonder about all the advertisements I came across that begged me to join an affiliate program. They made huge claims about how much money I would earn if I joined them so I just ignored them. That is until I started to understand more about affiliates and affiliate programs. WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE? WHERE DO I FIND AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM? HOW DO I DECIDE WHICH AFFILIATE PROGRAM IS FOR ME? I personally think a combination of these approaches is the best. If you choose something you are passionate about then you?ll have more fun and you?ll be more passionate about what you are promoting. When you have something you can put your heart and soul into you will generally do better than if you are promoting something you don?t care about or know nothing about. Make a list of what you are passionate about. Then do a search on the key words to see how many other people have this same interest. You can do this by using a key-word search. www.goodkeywords.com offer free software you can download. Use this to search for the information. Just type in the key word and see how many results come up, i.e. how many people searched for those word over the last month. Then use your search engine to locate your affiliate program. For example my personal primary interests evolve around living a better life. This means I am interested in health, wealth, developing better relationships and emotional and spiritual well being. Because I have these fundamental desires I searched for an affiliate program that helped me to attract more of these things into my life. You may decide to go with just one program. The ideal situation would be to find one program. Understand how it works then branch out to include a few more that connect to your primary interest. Once you?ve understood what?s involved in promoting your primary program it will be only a little more effort to hook up with other programs and start increasing your monthly cheques! You may also find that as you go along you will need to buy a few things for example, web hosting and domain names. You may then see the value of adding these services to your affiliate list too. For example once I found my primary program I realised I had to advertise in order to get customers. I also discovered that I really did need my own website even though I had acquired several free ones when I joined my affiliate program. So I learnt all about web hosts and domain names and website design. As I went along I picked up a few more affiliate programs. After much trial and error I came to develop an understanding of the concept of organic search engine optimisation. I loved the whole concept so I added this to my list of programs too. I have also developed a deeper understanding and appreciation for how Internet business works. HOW DO I MAKE AN AFFILIATE PROGRAM WORK FOR ME? Regardless of which program you are involved in, advertising and promoting your links and banners will become your number one priority! The best way to do this is by becoming educated in the right things to do. Unfortunately the truth is that 95% of Internet entrepreneurs make no money. There are lots of reasons for this. Some of the more serious and common reasons are that many people just don?t understand how to promote. Many still don?t even realise that they have to have their own websites. Many spend more money than they are comfortable with because they head down the road of paid advertising and they aren?t in a position to afford this. My best advise to you is that you enjoy your affiliate programs. Get your own website. Learn about organic search engine optimisation and spend your money wisely. Like it? Share it!More by this author |