There are hundreds of opportunities that can make you money online , but affiliate programs are one of the best ways and the easiest ways to monetize your website or blog, especially if you don’t have any products or service to sell.

There are a number of reasons for that, but the basic ones are that there is no product to develop or maintain,  easy to get started, no great technical knowledge is required and it’s just not that complicated. Hence the perfect business for those that don’t have any background or experience.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Basically affiliate marketing is where you as an affiliate marketer like you promote a merchant or vendors products or services to the public, When someone clicks on your link and is directed to the merchant’s website and buys from them, you get a commission on the sale.

From an affiliate marketers perspective there are many advantages such as no managing of products or stock, no dealing with customers and invoices and no responsibility towards making the sale other than directing the prospective customer in the right direction.

Sometimes the affiliate link will also read “affiliate program”, “associates” or “partners”. The good thing is that this signing up part of the affiliate program process is always free. Depending on what type of program or site is managing the affiliate program, you can make money per click or on different rates of conversion. You can also make money if you persuade someone else to join the same affiliate program.

How To Get Started

Affiliate programs are available for almost any product you can think off.  of course, you can’t promote all products, so you need to focus. The first step is to choose a niche and then search for products or services around that niche.

The second steep is to  register a domain name, purchase hosting and setup your website to promote your niche. Many of the larger merchants will provide you with banners, images and your affiliate link (this is needed for you to get credit for any eventual sale) to put in your website.

The third step is to write articles about your niche focusing on certain keywords. It’s important to write unique and original content when promoting your product as Google will give a lot more credibility to valuable content as opposed to regurgitated articles. If you are not good about writing articles, you can hire a professional writer for this job. you can find writers in fiverr.com who are willing to write articles for $5.00 per article.

Once you have your site setup its time to start driving traffic to your website. This can be done in two ways. One, using free traffic that includes YouYube videos, social media and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Two, you can advertise your blog or website using paid traffic such as Google Adwords, Bing,  or other advertising networks.

Affiliate marketing is one of the easiest ways to start making money online. You don’t need to create a product, you can just sell someone else’s. However, it takes a lot time, persistence and motivation.

A highly recommended sources of affiliate programs are:  Clickbank,  Jvzoo  and Warrior Plus. Most affiliate programs have an average commission rate of 50%.