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Affiliate Marketing For Dummies

Posted by Paul B | May 19, 2008 .

Now I don’t ever pretend to be an affiliate marketing expert, in fact of all my online income sources it’s probably the 1 I would like to be much better at. What I would say though is that I do manage to make “some” money from selling other peoples products and services. Having spoken to quite a few people about this it seems that I’m doing better than most. I was thinking of this post and how I was going to do it last week, I was trying to think of three key points just to get you started with affiliate marketing but was struggling. I know in my mind that the big guys aren’t telling us everything. So over the weekend I sat down with my daughter and decided what better way than to go through with her how she could make some money. Anyway, this is what we came up with (I’ll let you know how she got on after):-

1. Avoiding the big commission products. There are plenty of products that you can find online (especially with ClickBank) that will give you a 70%-80% commission. You have to ask yourself if what they are giving away is really worth the money? For every genuinely generous merchant you’ll come across 100 flogging over priced crap that end up getting refunded. These high figures also attract serious amounts of affiliate competition. You’re the new guy, start small.

2. The route of least resistance. Before trying to promote any product as an affiliate research heavily what has to happen in order for you to get paid. What is the sign up/purchase page like. Is it easy to follow, does it ask too many probing questions, is it secure? At the end of the day would you buy from them?

3. Every affiliate expert I’ve ever read has gone on and on about the need to pre-sell. Whilst this is true for most products over $20-$30 there are plenty of products that you can sell using nothing more than a casual mention or even in extreme cases the pre-bundled banners that most merchants supply.

We also came up with 2 extra tips:-

4. Doing it for the kids. Laura came up with this herself. She wants to sell things to her friends. Do you know how ShoeMoney made most of his money? Ringtones! Who buys ringtones, certainly not most of the sane grown ups I know, it’s teenagers and kids nagging their parents. If you’re struggling to make money from one demographic don’t be afraid to look at others, Bebo and FaceBook are worth billions for a reason.

5. Free. Free is a great word, especially combined with tip 4. Find products that are “free” but pay an affiliate commission.

So over the weekend we combined all of this. Laura has been heavily into Bebo for a while now, happily clicking ads and earning them money. Generally anything that flashes. She now has her own website where she’s going to post all of the rubbish (in my opinion) that she used to put on Bebo. I’m sure it’s going to be great stuff! To get her started with affiliate marketing we put a few banners up for some free toolbar offers, the same sort of stuff plastered all over Bebo. In terms of promotion all she did was create a link to her site from Bebo, just a plain old link, she’s got lots of friends who are very active on Bebo. So as an affiliate marketing dummy how did she do?

I don’t suppose I should be telling you this but by this morning she has made more than me in affiliate earnings over the weekend! Of course this won’t continue unless she can get fresh sources of traffic and carries on posting. Then again she’s never been short of things to say.

This has taught me that yes you can make money as an affiliate. It’s also taught me that I should maybe try following my own advice every now and then. I just hope that my daughter remembers me when she’s of living the dot com lifestyle.

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3 Comments so far
  1. google web hosting review UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14  May 20, 2008 12:33 am

    sweetness.
    i gotta get back into that game. i had a terrible, terrible time the first time around though and lost a bunch of money. but i’m gonna get an adsense check here in a bit, may be i should turn around and give it back to google.

    google web hosting review’s last blog post..By: Web Hosting Plans

  2. google web hosting review UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14  May 20, 2008 12:35 am

    hey, by the way, i never catch your webcam on….it’s always on still mode (not that I’m trying to be a stalker like shooemoney).

    google web hosting review’s last blog post..By: Web Hosting Plans

  3. Paul B UNITED KINGDOM Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14  May 20, 2008 8:19 am

    Yeah that shooemoney fella is never away from here! ;)

    Laura is making money from organic traffic (nealry 60 visitors yesterday), not Adwords. Cool about getting the Adsense cheque though, is that your first? I have a picture of mine somewhere. I always go for direct payment into the bank now but then again I hate my local bank staff, each time I bring a dollar cheque in they look like they’re going to cry.

    The webcam is stills only running from my PDA in the office so it’s only one from about 7am to 6:00pm British time. I’m leaving the office behind soon to work from home again (I need to see my family more) so I’m planning something a little more hi-tec then.