Easy simple way one: Affiliate and Affiliate programs

The best way to make money online is by becoming an “Affiliate“.

An affiliate is basically someone who partners with a company or companies and agrees to promote that companies product or services. The company agrees to pay the “affiliate” a commission on any traffic his / her website directs to the companies website and generates a sale, lead, or other action requested by company.

It’s the best way for a beginner - because you don’t need inventory or anything - all you do is “cut and paste” an Html code onto your site.

Joining an “Affiliate program” is always free. Never fall into the trap of having to pay a company to join their affiliate program.

How does this make you money. Well, joining is free. You may find that some companies or programs require you to have a website, or your own personal website [ www.domain ]. They may even require you to have a certain amount of traffic to your site. But in general - there are a lot of affiliate programs that will allow you to join and start promoting products even if you are brand new to the game.

When I first started - I join three affiliate programs just with my “Myspace” page as my designated affiliate website. It was pretty easy - I just put the codes on my “myspace page” and poof - banner ads were running 24/7.

The obvious here is that you join, promote a companies service or product, and if you fulfill the companies requirement - you get paid. Easy, simple, no cost to you.

What is not so obvious is the fact that like any other business out there - this is a numbers game. In order to get one sale you may need to have 20, 40, 80 people see and visit that site. So the key is to get traffic, traffic, and more traffic. Did I mention “Traffic”…

I will discuss how to get free traffic in a moment - but most people use “PPC ads” [ pay per click ads ]. Google, Yahoo, ExactSeek, even MSN has joined the PPC game. But this method of driving traffic to your site can be very expensive. Even if you are directing them to your affiliates company site. When I first started I used Google’s “Adwords”. I learned very quickly how expensive the PPC game can be to you and I. I also learned that it takes some time of trial and error before you can get comfortable using and promoting your site correctly using a PPC system. In my first month I spent more than $200 on my PPC campaign and earned only $0.69 cents. Not a good rate of return at all.

So first join affiliate program, here are a few companies I recommend and use:

Linkshare.com        CJ.com [ commission junction ]

ROI.com                Revenue Pilot

                 Adsense

The best way to start is to go to a company site that you are familiar with - meaning there product or services. If they offer an “Affiliate program” it is usually posted at the bottom of the webpage with other company links. If not there, check the “about us” or “about company” page. It is usually labeled - join “ affiliate, affiliation, or associate “. In some cases it maybe labeled differently, but if you look you will probably find that most companies have “affiliate programs”

The goal is to keep this free and at no cost to you. So here are some basic and simple ways to promote your site and affiliate site at no cost to you.

Learn to write, and write a lot:

1. Blog: blogs are everywhere today. Myspace, has a blog section, and several other website have blogs or a blog section you can leave a message [ comment ] on. So write about what you know [ affiliate companies product or service] and link to it. Of course - no spam, your message should be in line with what the subject matter of the blog is. If the subject is phones don’t write about this great new typewriter.

2. Bulletins, and the likes: again, write about it and put links to the site.

3. Email groups. Now this maybe hard but if done right, it works.

If you are a part of an email group great, if not join one or create your own. Some programs block spam on emails but if your part of the group and stay on the same topic you can direct traffic to your site or affiliate site.

4. Myspace, Friendster, and the like: myspace reports having 200,000,000+ million subscribers. It’s free to join, easy to create a page and an open door to millions of potential viewers and traffic. I watched a VH1 show where they were talking about the 100 most famous myspace people in the world. There are people who have used myspace and even millions of there “myspace friends” to help them make money, start online business, and even get a movie career.

5. Give it away free in forms of e-Books. Ever read an e-book that even though it gave you great ideas and tips on how to do something - it seemed that it promoted a certain product. Well, that’s call mass marketing. You create [ write your own ] and promote an e-book who’s true hidden purpose is to promote a product or affiliation company. You give it away free and people will come.

Concern: Now when it comes to pasting some affiliate Html code onto myspace or websites like myspace - you might need to learn some HTML code basics. Some codes from affiliate programs are not compatible or are blocked by myspace. So you have to learn some basic Html code in order to redirect WebPages and create your own banner ads.

* again - this is information you can get free online.

** Perfect example is Revver - it is currently being blocked by Myspace [ if not changed by now ] but myspace has been known to block other third party companies so you have to learn HTMl in order to create links that redirect people to your intended affiliate website.

Bonus tip: One of the things I like to do is to submit my affiliate links directly to search engines and directories. This helps me get a lot of free traffic to my affiliate links with minimum effort. I take about 30 minutes a day doing this simple step. I select the affiliates I want, get the direct Url link and submit to directories using fast submit sites online.

* again, your going to need basic Html knowledge for this because some affiliate url links are not accepted by search engines or directories. So you have to create a redirect page on your website and submit that Url page address to the engines and directories.

* as always, redirect codes are easy to find with a simple free Google search. There are thousands of sites out there that will show you how to do this.

Now that you have the basics, let us move to the second “easy simple way” you can make money online with no cost to you.

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